page_title: Troy H. Middleton
section_title: Command and General Staff School
hierarchical_section_title: Troy H. Middleton / Military Schools / Command and General Staff School
caption_attribution_description: Lieut. Col. George S. Patton, Jr., 1st Tank Battalion, and a French Renault tank, summer 1918.
context_page_description: Lieutenant General Troy Houston Middleton was a distinguished educator and senior officer of the United States Army who served as a corps commander in the European Theatre during World War II and later as president of Louisiana State University. He is best known for his decision to hold Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, contrary to the recommendation of Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., Commanding General of the United States Third Army.
  Enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1910, Middleton was first assigned to the 29th Infantry Regiment, where he worked as a clerk. Here he did not become an infantryman as he had hoped, but he was pressed into service playing football, a sport strongly endorsed by the army. Following two years of enlisted service, Middleton was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he was given the opportunity to compete for an officer's commission. Of the 300 individuals who were vying for a commission, 56 were selected, and four of them, including Middleton, would become general officers.
context_section_description: As one of the youngest majors in the army, Middleton found himself among officers who were ten to fifteen years his senior at the Army's Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Students attended this ten-month school to qualify for higher commands.  Here Middleton met a classmate, George Patton, who would become one of his friends. Patton had confided to Middleton that he predicted completing the course as an Honor Graduate, one who finishes in the top 25% of the nearly 200 students. His prediction came true, and he finished 14th in the class. Middleton finished 8th.  With his exceptional class performance, Middleton, along with half a dozen other graduates, was invited to stay on for the next four years as an instructor at the school.
  During his second year of teaching at Command and General Staff School, one of his students, Dwight D. Eisenhower, would come to his office, sit on the corner of his desk, and pump him for information, knowing that Middleton had commanded a regiment in combat in France. Eisenhower asked the most practical questions, and was unquestionably motivated—he finished first in his class.  Nearly every officer who commanded a division in Europe during World War II attended the Command and General Staff School during Middleton's tenure there from 1924 to 1928. There was also a point in time during World War II when every corps commander in Europe had been a student of Middleton's.
caption: While at Command and General Staff School, Middleton befriended George Patton, shown here in France in 1918.
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