Soon after Ike married Mamie he was made Provost Marshal of his post and had considerable trouble at first keeping the untrained soldiers there in tow. Since Mamie was one of the few women in camp and had to be alone a lot he gave her a .45 pistol for protection and showed her how to use it.
A few weeks later he decided to try her out. “Mamie,” he said, “let’s see you get your pistol out – as if there were somebody trying to break in through the front door.”
Mamie went hunting for the pistol which she had hidden behind the piano, inside a bedding roll, under a stack of other possessions. She had hidden it so well and it took her so long to locate it that Ike concluded “she couldn’t have gotten it out in a week, much less in a hurry.”
He decided to concentrate on making the camp safer.
Source:
Boller, Paul F. "Mamie Doud Eisenhower." Presidential Wives: An Anecdotal History. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. 432. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Eisenhower, At Ease, 124-25.
Further Reading:
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