Veteran Presidents: Those who Served in Office and in Uniform

President’s Day is a holiday in which we recognize the 46 people chosen to hold the highest ranking office in our country. We learn about them in grade school, research their accomplishments and failures in high school and get into some in-depth exploration of their careers in college. Did you know that 31 of the 46 Presidents have served in the military? Twenty of them have seen combat. Let’s see if you knew the following tantalizing trivia pertaining to a few of those Presidential Veterans:

Who Holds the Highest Rank
While the highest ranking office in government is the President, the military only awards its most prestigious rank to individuals serving in times of conflict. The two highest ranking officers in the US Army to serve as Presidents are George Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1775, congress promoted Washington to “General and Commander in chief of the army of the United Colonies and of all forces raised or to be raised by them.” Just over 200 years later, Washington was posthumously promoted to General of the Armies of the United States. He is now, and will forever be, the only person given this (unofficial) six-star rank.

Eisenhower was promoted to the rank of five-star General in 1944. His military accomplishments during the two World Wars were recognized before he retired from the service to run for President.

Courage in the Face of Adversity
In addition to bestowing rank to especially vallant and accomplished military personnel, there are also distinguished awards. The Congressional Medal of Honor is the highest and most prestigious award presented to members of the military who perform acts of valor. The country’s 21st President, Theodore Roosevelt, was posthumously given the Medal of Honor for his bravery and perseverance in the Spanish-American war in 1898. In the battle for San Juan Hill, then LTC Roosevelt charged the hill with just a few men and zero regard for his own safety. Roosevelt managed to reach enemy trenches while under heavy fire and clear the way for the rest of his men to continue their assault.

John F. Kennedy received the Navy and Marine Corp Medal and a Purple Heart for heroics during his deployment in WWII. While piloting a Patrol Torpedo boat near Papua New Guinea, a Japanese destroyer crashed into his vessel and split the boat in half. Many soldiers died instantly from the impact but Kennedy was thrown across the deck and suffered a back injury. Despite his injury, the former Harvard University swim team member assisted the 11 survivors in a three-mile swim to the island that could be seen on the horizon. One of his men had been badly burned during the crash and was immobile. Kennedy put the sailor into a lifejacket and swam the three miles to shore with one of the straps clenched between his teeth, towing the man behind him as he swam.

Who Knew?
Strange could be his middle name: Did you know that the “S” in Ulysses S. Grant doesn’t even stand for anything? His given name is Hiram Ulysses Grant. The “S” was added in error to his nomination to attend West Point by an Ohio congressman. He tried, in vain, to have his name corrected and joked to his future wife, Julia Dent, in a letter to “Find some name beginning with “S” for me. You know I have an “S” in my name and don’t know what it stands for.”

Also strange: Grant hated uniforms. He was constantly receiving demerits while at the Academy for having unkempt attire and even as he ascended the ranks, he refused to don the appropriate dress. As a 4-Star General, a rank created in 1866 specifically for Grant, he wore a private’s jacket instead of an officer’s traditional garb.

While his success on the battlefield is well known, his failures outside of the military are another strange quirk of the 18th President of the US. In between his successes in the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, Grant failed at farming, real estate and rent collecting. To make ends meet, he was selling firewood on a street corner in St. Louis. After his presidency, he crashed and burned as a financial manager and lost everything. His only successful business venture came after his death, when the publication of his memoirs by Mark Twain was a best seller and his widow received a fortune from the proceeds, restoring his wealth.

For the Fact Fanatics
Below is a listing of US Wars and the Presidents that served on the front lines during conflict (note that there are no service men or women that fought in the Korean War, Vietnam, Gulf War, Afghanistan or Iraq that then went on to hold a Presidency):
Revolutionary War (1775-1783): George Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson
War of 1812 (1812-1815): Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, James Buchanan
Mexican-American War (1846-1848): Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Ulysses S. Grant
Civil War (1861-1865): Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley
Spanish-American War (1898): Theodore Roosevelt
WWI (1914-1918): Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower
WWII (1939-1945): Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, George H. W. Bush, Gerald R. Ford, James Earl Carter

The ability to lead soldiers and sailors in war is certainly great resume fodder for running the country. We salute the many Commanders in Chief that have also braved the battlefield. Share your Presidential military trivia below!