is primarily responsible for covert operations. He left the CIA in 1953 to become an Under Secretary of State. After retiring from the State Department in 1954, Smith continued to serve the Eisenhower administration in various posts for several years until he retired shortly before he died in 1961. Early life Walter Bedell Smith was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on 5 October 1895, the elder of two sons of William Long Smith, a silk buyer for the Pettis Dry Goods Company, and his wife, Ida Francis née Bedell, who worked for the same company. Smith was called Bedell from his boyhood. From an early age he was nicknamed "Beetle" or occasionally "Beedle" or "Boodle." He was educated at St. Peter and Paul School, Public Schools #10 and #29, Oliver Perry Morton School, and Emmerich Manual High School, where he studied to be a machinist. There, he took a job at the National Motor Vehicle Company and eventually left high school without graduating. Smith enrolled at Butler University, but his father developed serious health problems, and Smith left to return to his job and support his family. In 1911, at the age of 16, Smith enlisted as a private in Company D of the 2nd Indiana Infantry of the Indiana National Guard. The Indiana National Guard was called out twice in 1913 for the Ohio River flood and during the Indianapolis streetcar strike. Smith was promoted to corporal and then sergeant. During the Pancho Villa Expedition he served on the staff of the Indiana National Guard. In 1913, Smith met Mary Eleanor (Nory) Cline, who was born in 1893 and died in 1963, and they were married in a traditional Roman Catholic wedding ceremony on 1 July 1917. Their marriage was of long duration but was childless. World War I Smith's work during the Ohio River flood of 1913 led to his nomination for officer training in 1917, and he was sent to the Officer Candidate Training Camp at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana for officer indoctrination. Upon his graduation on 27 November 1917, he was directly commissioned as a second lieutenant. He was then assigned to the newly formed Company A, 1st Battalion, 39th Infantry, part of the 4th Infantry Division at Camp Greene, North Carolina. The 4th Infantry Division embarked for Europe, which was embroiled in World War I, from Hoboken, New Jersey, on 9 May 1918, and reached Brest,