Wisconsin beginnings
Later accounts place Eisenmann in a German immigrant farm family in northern Wisconsin, one of ten children. He remembered a childhood Airedale called Bob, though the details of those earliest years remain sketchy.
Service before and during the war
In 1936 Eisenmann joined the Army and served in Hawaii, working in radio and telegraph duties at Schofield Barracks and with the 8th Field Artillery Gunners. He returned to service in 1942. Accounts place him in Britain and France, where sport remained part of military life.
He later described a bombing incident and remembered it in different terms. The broad wartime service is established; the exact details of that episode are not settled here.
A note on the early years
The service outline comes from contemporary material; much of the family story comes from Eisenmann’s own later memories.