He graduated in 1915, ranked 61st in a class of 164 men. He then went into the army to train as an officer. His first assignment was at Fort Sam Houston, near San Antonio, Texas. Shortly after he arrived, he met 18-year-old Mamie Geneva Doud. They dated against the wishes of her father, who did not want his daughter to marry a soldier. On July 1, 1916, they were married. They had two sons: Doud Dwight, who died in childhood, and John. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Eisenhower was promoted to captain and assigned to training duty. He applied for an overseas assignment that would get him into combat, but his superiors valued his work as an organizer and trainer and put him in command of Camp Colt at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. One of the army's first tank corps was being formed there, and Eisenhower trained the fighting unit. In October 1918, he finally got orders to take the tanks to France, but the war ended before his outfit could sail. Eisenhower had done an outstanding job, for which he won the Distinguished Service Medal, but he was bitterly disappointed at missing combat. As World War II began in Europe in 1939 and, although the United States was not involved, there was concern that it soon would be. The Congress of the United States responded by ordering a military draft that began in 1940. Suddenly the army was expanding, and Eisenhower's abilities were in demand. When the army held maneuvers in Louisiana in 1941, he played a leading role as a staff officer, adding to his reputation and securing him a promotion to brigadier general. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the next day the United States entered World War II against the Axis Powers (Japan, Germany, and Italy). A week later, the army's new chief of staff, General George C. Marshall, called Eisenhower to Washington, D.C., and put him in charge of the War Plans Division. After his successes of the Normandy invasion and the battle of the bulge he was promoted to the U.
