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But it was a trip they took together that Gingrich claims changed his life forever. It occurred when he was 14 and went with his father to the World War I battlefield of Verdun, France. They wandered the fields, scene of ghastly sacrifice, with its solemn tombs for soldiers from each country, and then slipped into the ossuary. But there were private stairs leading down to a basement, walled off by glass windows that had been painted black to hide what was inside. The paint had peeled, so they decided to take a peek.
What they saw was horrifying. Rib cages, skulls, long bones, all piled high in a huge mound. The two walked silently back up the steps. "That was where he really got his political aspiration," says Bob. "He vowed to do everything he could to see that this never happened again."
That revelation might have inspired him to follow in Bob's military footsteps, but Newt had flat feet and bad eyesight (nowadays he wears contact lenses). He would probably never have made it into the service, and by the time of Vietnam he was a full-time graduate student and the father of two. Besides, he had already set his heart on politics, a path requiring less self-control, a quality he lacked, but great self-confidence, which he had in abundance.
That path too was scouted during that famous field trip. After visiting the battlefield, Newt and his father went downtown, where he saw bomb damage that he assumed was from World War II. He was appalled to learn that it was from 1916, which was 42 years before. "Three times my lifetime ago, people had damaged that town," he marveled, "and they still hadn't found the energy or the resources to fix it."
When Bob Gingrich rotated back to Fort Benning, Georgia, Newt attended Baker High School in nearby Columbus. He quickly earned a reputation as brainy and eccentric. At Baker High, he emceed the school talent show, rattling off a string of corny jokes. The kids started booing. But he stayed cocky. If they didn't like a joke, throw money, he told the audience. He walked off the stage with $19. Newt was voted "Most Intellectual" in his senior class. In the high school yearbook, the quote under his picture read "Specialization may produce success, but greatness is acquired only through generalization."
His crushing break with his father came when he was a sophomore at Emory. Gingrich announced to his stunned family that he wanted to get married--to his high school math teacher, Jacqueline Battley. The unconventional relationship had stayed very quiet, but Newt's sisters knew this was no ordinary schoolboy crush. "Jackie was someone he could talk with, who could see his visions," says Newt's sister Roberta. But Bob was adamantly opposed to a wedding. Bob had never become a doctor because he had to work long hours as a bartender to support his family while going to college. He didn't want Newt stalled with such burdens.
Newt and Jackie got married anyway; Bob refused to go to the wedding and forced the rest of the family to choose: no one went. For years to come, the family followed Newt's progress at a distance as he went through undergraduate and graduate school and then a teaching post at West Georgia College. Bob later admitted that at the time he didn't know his son had run for Congress twice and lost.
BASIC TRAINING