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.
Read more about this topic: Frank Maxwell Andrews
Famous quotes containing the words war i, early, life, world and/or war:
“Either war is obsolete or men are.”
—R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983)
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“No Life can pompless pass away—
The lowliest career
To the same Pageant wends its way
As that exalted here—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo,
And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro;
Deeth is an ende of every worldly soore.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400)
“There’s no telling what might have happened to our defense budget if Saddam Hussein hadn’t invaded Kuwait that August and set everyone gearing up for World War II½. Can we count on Saddam Hussein to come along every year and resolve our defense-policy debates? Given the history of the Middle East, it’s possible.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)