LeRoy Eltinge
Brigadier General LeRoy Eltinge
By: Grace Elting Castle
Brigadier
General LeRoy Eltinge, a 1896 graduate of the United States Military Academy at
West Point, NY, had a long and prestigious military career.
The 64th Annual Report of the Association of Graduates of the
US Military Academy (June 12, 1933) provides this information:
"…Without mentioning to his family his wish to enter
the Military Academy, he took the examination, passed, and entered with the
class of '95. A hazing scrape transferred him to the class of '96, and his first
assignment was to Troop E, Fourth Cavalry, then stationed at Vancouver Barracks,
Washington. In 1898, six troops of his regiment were sent to the Philippines. He
was Quartermaster of the Peru, on which General E.S. Otis traveled to assume
command of the Eighth Army Corps. The six troops of the Fourth were divided into
two squadrons of three troops each, and participated in the fighting around
Manila and in the North with Lawton's column until Aguinaldo was captured.
From command of E Troop, promotion took him to further
Philippine service with the Sixth Cavalry and to duty with General Franklin
Bell's reconcentration forces in Batangas Province. Lieutenant Eltinge accepted
a detail in the Quartermaster's dept. in Manila, but promotion coming at that
time and the knowledge that his regiment, the newly formed Fifteenth Cavalry,
was in a fighting sector among Moros, caused him to apply for duty with his
regiment. His first station was the island of Siassi where the mounts for a
war-strength troop consisted of two Philippine ponies…"
In the ensuing years, LeRoy Eltinge had an impressive Army
career which took him from France as a Deputy Chief of Staff of the American
expeditionary forces under General Pershing, to acting Chief of Staff in the
Philppine Islands, to commander of the First Cavalry in Texas, then as umpire of
the Army and Navy maneuvers in Hawaii, and to Fort McPherson, GA where he
commanded the Eighth Infantry Brigade. Later, he commanded the First Cavalry
Brigade at Fort Clark, TX. His final assignment was in Omaha, Nebraska where, as
commander of the Fourteenth Infantry Brigade, he died from pneumonia on May 13,
1931 .
The 64th Annual Report: "…LeRoy Eltinge had an
unusually keen and analytical mind and in his several tours of duty at Fort
Leavenworth was known as an outstanding expert in Military Art. He was the
pioneer in introducing the psychological factor into the course of lectures and
wrote a book, "Psychology of War," which was widely used throughout
the duration of the war."
Among
his many honors were the Distinguished Service Medal for outstanding service in
World War I, and the posthumous commissioning of a ship named for him. The
General LeRoy Eltinge, launched September 20, 1944 by Kaiser Shipbuilding Co.,
Inc. in Richmond, CA, was commissioned by the Navy on February 21, 1945.
The ship served throughout the ensuing years, carrying U.S.
troops and foreign refugees to and from such places as Guam, Marseilles,
Shanghai, Japan, Korea and Germany. In 1952 she made several runs for the United
Nations, including transporting Dutch troops from Rotterdam to Korea. She was
active during the Hungarian Revolution, the Lebanon Crisis of 1958, and assisted
in the rescue of 26 survivors of the SS Halcyon Mediterranean off the coast of
Spain. Following her July 1960 support of the UN peace mission in the Belgian
Congo, the ship was placed on reserve status. Then in May 1965, she was returned
to service to embark 2,497 troops for Southeast Asia. She continued to transport
men and supplies from west coast ports to the Far East until, returning to San
Francisco from Vietnam in January of 1967, she was placed in ready reserve
status.
