Frank Maxwell Andrews - Early Life and World War I

Early Life and World War I

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Andrews was the grandson of a cavalry soldier who fought alongside Nathan Bedford Forrest and the great-great-nephew of two Tennessee governors, John C. Brown and Neill S. Brown (Nashville Banner, 5 May 1943). He graduated from the city's Montgomery Bell Academy in 1901 and entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in July 1902.

He graduated 42nd in his class and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 8th Cavalry on June 12, 1906, assigned to the Philippines from October 1906 to May 1907, and then to Fort Huachuca, Arizona. In 1912 he was promoted to an available billet as a first lieutenant in the 2nd Cavalry, at Fort Bliss, Texas, and in 1916 received a promotion to captain in the regiment while at Plattsburgh Barracks, New York.

The United States Army he joined was smaller than that of Bulgaria and beset with internal turmoil, but it gave the young second lieutenant ample opportunities to play polo, see the world (serving as aide-de-camp to Gen. M.M. Macomb in the Hawaii between 1911 and 1913), and observe the high and low politics of leadership in an ossified organization. After marrying Josephine "Johnny" Allen, the high-spirited daughter of Maj. Gen. Henry Tureman Allen, in 1914, Andrews gained entrée into elite inner circles of Washington society and within the military.

A story related in the press many times during Andrews' lifetime claimed that Gen. Allen forestalled aeronautical aspirations of his future son-in-law by declaring that no daughter of his would marry a flyer. Andrews' service records, however, show that his commanding officer in the Second Cavalry vetoed his application for temporary aeronautical duty with the Army Signal Corps in February 1914, a decision that held firm despite a plea from the Chief Signal Officer's for reconsideration by higher-ups.

Within a month after the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Andrews was transferred, over the objections of his cavalry commander, to the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps. After staff duty in Washington, D.C. between September 26, 1917, and April 25, 1918, Andrews went to Rockwell Field, California, for flying training. There, he earned a rating of Junior Military Aviator at the age of 34. Andrews did not overseas during the war as a member of the Air Service. Instead, he commanded various training airfields in Texas and Florida, and served in the war plans division of the Army General Staff in Washington, D.C. Following the war, he replaced Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell as the air officer assigned to the Army of Occupation in Germany, which his father-in-law, Gen. Allen, commanded.