course included instruction on combined arms, tactical principles and decisions, military history and economics, then ended with a written thesis. Middleton, who was one of the most junior members of his class, finished at the top of the class. Following the advanced course, Middleton spent the summer as the senior instructor at a Reserve Officer Training Camp at Fort Logan, Colorado, then returned to Camp Benning for one more year as a member of the Infantry Board. Four years at Benning had been enough for him and he was ready to move on. After expressing his wishes to a senior officer, he was assigned to Fort Leavenworth in the summer of 1923, a place he had been eleven years earlier to prepare for his officer's commission. Command and General Staff School As one of the youngest majors in the army, Middleton found himself among officers who were ten to fifteen years his senior at the Army's Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Students attended this ten-month school to qualify for higher commands. Here Middleton met a classmate, George Patton, who would become one of his friends. Patton had confided to Middleton that he predicted completing the course as an Honor Graduate, one who finishes in the top 25% of the nearly 200 students. His prediction came true, and he finished 14th in the class. Middleton finished 8th. With his exceptional class performance, Middleton, along with half a dozen other graduates, was invited to stay on for the next four years as an instructor at the school. During his second year of teaching at Command and General Staff School, one of his students, Dwight D. Eisenhower, would come to his office, sit on the corner of his desk, and pump him for information, knowing that Middleton had commanded a regiment in combat in France. Eisenhower asked the most practical questions, and was unquestionably motivated—he finished first in his class. Nearly every officer who commanded a division in Europe during World War II attended the Command and General Staff School during Middleton's tenure there from 1924 to 1928. There was also a point in time during World War II when every corps commander in Europe had been a student of Middleton's. War College In 1928, his final year at Leavenworth, Middleton received orders to attend the Army War College in Washington, D.C. His year at this highest level of