All this was unknown to the wider world, of course. Publicly Eisenhower cultivated the image of a sturdy American fighting man, all business and little fun. The press played up these traits: a profile of the general on the eve of the North African campaign described him as “tall and lean with hard muscles around his jaws and lips that can straighten into an Archimedean line, blue eyes that glint like marbles—he is as tough as hell.” The reporter wrote that the general was known informally as “Ike,” the nickname he’d had since childhood. “He is the best liked and least social of any American
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