GUNS Magazine The President & The Artist

We Like Ike

The manner in which Eisenhower came to own this rifle speaks much to his accomplishments—it was a gift commissioned for him in 1958 by his West Point Military Academy Classmates of 1915. Known as the class “the stars fell on,” his West Point peers were the men who led America’s Army in World War II as generals. Eisenhower would become their leader in the European Theater of Operations (ETO). The name inlaid in gold wire on this rifle’s barrel is “GENERAL DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER,” but the rank he really bore was beyond the normal scope of measure.

A general’s insignia consists of four stars but Eisenhower was one of the few American soldiers to ever wear five stars. As the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, he was the highest-ranking officer in the ETO. He commanded not only the land, air and sea forces of the United States and Great Britain, but also those of the occupied nations seeking refuge with the Allies after the Nazi conquest of Europe.

It was Eisenhower who bore the responsibility of wresting control of Western Europe from Adolf Hitler in a conflict of the magnitude and violence of which has known no comparison before or since. On June 6, 1944, when 156,000 Allied invasion troops, 6,939 vessels and 11,939 aircraft beat down the door of Hitler’s Festung Europa (Fortress Europe), it was Eisenhower who gave the order. This accomplishment was so spectacular the expression “D-Day,” which actually refers to the planned day of any invasion, passed into history to signify the Allied invasion of France and no other.

After World War II, Eisenhower remained at the head of the United States Army as Chief of Staff until 1950 when he once again picked up the mantle of world leadership as the Commander-in-Chief of NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was the alliance of free European nations blocking Soviet aggression during the Cold War until the communist bloc ultimately collapsed in the 1980s.

By 1961, Eisenhower had also served two terms as president of the United States and had a record of 50 years of extraordinary service to the American people and the free world. It was this year that the Association of Graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point chose him to be the recipient of the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer award. It was at this award ceremony Eisenhower’s classmates presented him with this beautiful rifle, two years in the making.