When Dwight D. Eisenhower was a young lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army in 1919, he drove with a military convoy across the country. He saw firsthand how bad the nation’s roads were. Most were made of unpaved dirt. Old wooden bridges broke under the heavy army vehicles. It took the soldiers 62 grueling days to drive from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, California.
Today, it takes about five days.
During World War II (1939–1945), Eisenhower was named the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force.
