In the summer of 1971 I was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, going through U.S. Army Field Artillery Officer Training. A few of my several hundred classmates were U.S. Marines, who relied on the Army for artillery officer training. A few others were German, Thai, or Vietnamese. One of my Marine classmates was Mike, a genial Texan and Aggie. Mike knocked on the door of my Bachelor Officers Quarters room one afternoon and asked if he could see my notes from a class he had missed. I was glad to help.
After looking at my notes he picked up my "flying saucer" dress cap with a device like that in the image above. He said, "You know, there was a time when the eagle faced the arrows instead of the olive branch. That was before nineteen and forty eight when these liberals took over the government and changed the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense, so nobody would think we were the kind of country that would stand up and fight for what we believe in." I let this pass instead of challenging his assertion that liberals had taken over the government in 1948. At the time, I knew that there had been Democratic presidents (FDR and Truman) from 1933 until 1952. I also knew that Truman, who became president when FDR died in 1945, won the 1948 election, remembered for the erroneous Chicago Daily Tribune headline declaring Dewey the winner. What I didn't know is that the Republicans had controlled both the House of Representatives and the Senate from 1945 until the 1948 election gave the Democrats majorities in both houses, along with the White House. Whether this amounted to liberals taking over the government is debatable.
What neither Mike nor I knew was that the name Department of War was eliminated in 1947 as a result of legislation, the National Security Act, that passed the GOP controlled Congress and was signed into law by President Truman. Until then there were two cabinet level agencies that controlled the military: the Department of War, which controlled the Army; and the Department of the Navy. The National Security Act put the Army, Navy, and newly created Air Force under the control of a new cabinet level agency, the National Defense Establishment, headed by a Secretary of Defense. In 1949 the National Defense Establishment was renamed the Department of Defense. The direction the eagle faces on the cap device, which is modeled on the obverse of the Great Seal of the United States, was changed by presidential order in 1945.
If President Trump succeeds in renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War, will he think to reverse the direction of the eagle's gaze? If so, Mike, if you're still with us, and I hope you are, congratulations. Despite our differences on political matters (I prefer DoD to DoW and olive branches to arrows), I enjoyed our time as classmates and hold you in great respect.
