History Spotlight, 1/26

Douglas MacArthur, one of only five men to earn the rank of five-star general, was born on this day in 1880 in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was born in the uppermost floor of the Little Rock Armory while his father, the Civil War hero Arthur MacArthur, Jr, was stationed there. Douglas MacArthur always said that his first memory of was of the "sound of the bugle." He grew up on various military posts that his father was stationed to all over the American West and that's where he learned from his father, and from the men he saw around him his dedication to the military.
In 1898, Douglas MacArthur enrolled in the US Military Academy at West Point. His mother, Pinky MacArthur, is said to have rented a hotel room with an view of her son's dormitory window so she could keep an eye on him and make sure he was keeping up with his studies.
It must have worked because he graduated first out of a class of 93 in 1903.
After West Point, he served in the Army in the Corps of Engineers in the Philippine colonial wars as his father's aide-de-camp.
Douglas MacArthur first came to the public spotlight during the US occupation of Vera Cruz, Mexico after the Tampico Affair sent US/Mexico relations into the dumper. MacArthur was involved behind enemy lines and wound up in a very exciting railroad chase back to that safety of American lines. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor, but was declined because he had exceeded his orders.
During World War One, MacArthur was promoted to full colonel and transferred his branch of the army from the Corps of Engineers to the Infantry. He was stationed on the front lines and believed in leading from the front. He frequently refused to wear a gas mask and always could be seen with a swagger stick, beckoning his men forward. He had this bright yellow scarf that he would wear, not only to show his men that he was at the front, but to demonstrate that he had no fear of the enemy.
He was again nominated, and again didn't get the Medal of Honor. In what has to be the winner for "Most Embarrassing Move by the Mother of a Historical Figure", Pinky started calling Congressmen and hassling them about why her son wasn't getting his Medal of Honor. Douglas put his foot down with his mother for one of the very few times in his life and ordered her to lay off the Congressmen.
After the war, MacArthur became superintendent of West point and did a lot to bring the curriculum into the modern age. He also had another big falling out with his mother when he married socialite, party girl and divorcee, Louise Cromwell Brooks. But the marriage didn't last and they were divorced by 1929. I'm sure Douglas heard about that from Pinky.
During the thirties, he was involved in the Bonus Brigade scandal. The whole thing stated during World War One, when members of the military were promised some kind of super bonus for their old age, to be paid out in 1945. In 1932, during the Great Depression, many of these veterans decided that they'd like to get their bonus early and marched on Washington to make their case. They weren't exactly being models of "peaceable assembly" and had set up a shanty town and taken over a number of buildings. MacArthur, who was Chief of Staff, was ordered by Hoover to disperse the protesters and he did it with his usual zealousness. Tear gas, tanks, bayonet charges, the works. By the time the smoke cleared, the Bonus Marchers were a cause celebe and MacArthur was mired in a national scandal.