This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we return to our American stories.

Up next, a story about Gettysburg, but not about the battle that happened there in the

19th century, but how what happened there impacted General Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 20th,

as our troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. You're to tell the story of how Gettysburg

impacted Ike, is National Park Service

Ranger Dan Vermilia. Take it away, Dan. When Eisenhower was young, his mom had to hide his history

books to get him to do his chores. Sounds like all of us here, right? If I've heard it once,

I've heard it a thousand times.

But growing up in Abilene, Kansas in the 1890s and early 1900s, he's interacting with Civil War veterans.

They're still around.

They're still on the scene.

He's hearing stories from them, and he would also note that he thought it was utterly

strange that he would go on to live in a place like Gettysburg, having spent so much of his early life talking with Civil War veterans in his hometown of Abilene. But what got him from, I like to read history just because I like to read about it to, oh, history shapes the world we live in and it shapes us. Gettysburg is what got him there. And his trips here. His first

trip to Gettysburg, 1915. The West Point class of 1915, the class the stars fell on, more

members of that class reaching the rank of general than any other. He came here with his

West Point class to do a staff ride, something that still happens every year here at Gettysburg.

Three years later, Eisenhower's back, commanding camp Colt, the tank training camp.

It wasn't the assignment he wanted.

He wanted to be with his fellow West Point classmates, his fellow Army officers going to France,

getting combat experience in the Great War.

Nobody knew it as the First World War at the time, the Great War. But instead,

...