Omar Bradleythe Confidence I Needed Had Been Restored; I Never Suffered a Faint Heart Again
Introduction
During the 2d Earth War, America possessed the not bad military leaders needed to guide its armed forces successfully through that terrible ordeal. Those leaders, whose prewar origins have ofttimes been obscure, met the challenges of worldwide disharmonize and went on to provide direction for the Us in the turbulent decades that followed. One of those legendary figures was Omar Nelson Bradley, General of the Regular army and offset Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Full general Bradley was a product of the American interwar Regular army, an establishment that produced men like George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and George South. Patton. Small in size and lacking modern equipment, the U.Due south. Regular army of the 1920s and 1930s focused on education and doctrine and, when in could beget to exercise so, on training. Officers like Omar Bradley honed their leadership and warfighting skills during this seemingly somnolent period in American military history and the led America's Army through war and peace in the hard decades of the 1940s and 1950s.
To better sympathize the evolution of such leaders, this pamphlet traces the immature Bradley through the prewar period and follows his rapid transition to positions of greater authority during the war years and ultimately his supposition of greater responsibilities in the changing postwar earth. This curt biography, written past Dr. Charles E. Kirkpatrick in remembrance of the ane hundredth anniversary of Bradley's nascence, gives us an opportunity to reflect on how military machine service has prepared so many Americans to contribute so much to the Nation and the globe.
| Gordon R. Sullivan General, U.s.a. Army Chief of Staff | Grand.P.W. Stone Secretarial assistant of the Army |
Washington, D.C.
October 29, 1992
General of the Army Omar Nelson Bradley, Chief of Staff, U.s.a. Army.
Portrait by Clarence Lamont MacNelly, 1972.
OMAR NELSON BRADLEY
At the end of World War I, Omar Bradley considered himself a professional failure because he had spent the war in the United States while his contemporaries had distinguished themselves on the battlefields of French republic. His gloomy self-assessment was premature. Thirty-five years later he held the highest rank in the Us Army, had been its Principal of Staff, and had served ii terms every bit the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He had as well more than made up for his lack of combat duty, for during Earth War Ii he successively commanded a division, a corps, an regular army, and finally a group of armies.
His last control, the 12th U.S. Army Group, was the largest trunk of American soldiers always to serve under one field commander; at its peak it consisted of 4 field armies. Except for his original division assignments, Bradley won his wartime advocacy on the battlefield, commanding American soldiers in Due north Africa, Sicily, across the Normandy beaches, and into Germany itself. His understated personal style of control left newsmen with trivial to write virtually, especially when they compared him to the more flamboyant among the Centrolineal commanders, only his reputation as a fighter was secure among his peers and peculiarly with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander, who considered him indispensable.
Self-effacing and tranquillity, Bradley showed a business organization for the men he led that gave him the reputation as the "soldier's full general." That same concern made him the ideal selection in 1945 to reinvigorate the Veterans Administration and fix information technology to meet the needs of millions of demobilized servicemen. Afterward he left active duty, both political and military leaders continued to seek Bradley'due south advice. Perhaps more than importantly, he remained in close touch with the Army and served its succeeding generations every bit the ideal model of a professional person soldier.
Early Years
Omar Nelson Bradley was born-literally in a log motel-nigh Clark, Missouri, on 12 February 1893, the but surviving child of schoolteacher John Smith Bradley and Sarah Elizabeth Bradley, née Hubbard. The environment of Bradley'southward youth in rural Missouri was impoverished, but he received a good secondary education, condign a star actor on the Moberly High School baseball squad. Hunting to
| Bradley during his second year at West Point. He plant the construction of military life reassuring and quickly adapted to the rigors of cadet life. | |
supplement the family income, he also became a crevice shot. He went to work for the Wabash Railroad subsequently loftier schoolhouse graduation in order to earn enough money to enter the University of Missouri. Bradley's plans inverse, though, when his Sunday School superintendent recommended that he use for an appointment to Westward Betoken. After placing starting time in the competitive exams for his commune that were held at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, he received an appointment from Congressman William M. Rucker to enter the Armed forces University in the fall of 1911.
Some men had difficulty adapting to the demanding curriculum and strict military life at Due west Point, but Bradley confessed that the subject, the rigors of a lawmaking of conduct centering on accolade and duty, the structured society, and the opportunities for athletics profoundly appealed to him. An enthusiasm for sports took fourth dimension away from academics, merely Bradley still managed to finish a respectable 44th in his graduating class of 164. He lettered both in football and in baseball, and later he commented on the importance of sports in teaching the art of group cooperation.
Similar his classmate Dwight Eisenhower, Bradley was not specially distinguished in the purely military machine side of his cadet years, achieving the rank of cadet lieutenant only in his last year. But cadet rank turned
out to take footling to practise with futurity achievement for the class of 1915, which came to be known equally "the class the stars fell on" because so many of its members became generals. Amid its ranks were Joseph Yard. Swing, one of the airborne pioneers, and aviators John T. McNarney and George E. Stratemeyer. Somewhat lesser-known classmates, including Stafford LeRoy Irwin, Leland Due south. Hobbs, John W. Leonard, Hubert R. Harmon, and James A. Van Fleet, would command Bradley's divisions and corps during World War 2.
Bradley graduated from West Indicate on 12 June 1915 as a second lieutenant of Infantry. Three months later he joined the 14th Infantry Regiment's third battalion at Fort George Wright, about Spokane, Washington, where he was exposed to the old Regular Army life that was before long to disappear forever. Under the tutorship of Edwin Forrest Harding, another second lieutenant who was six years his senior, Bradley began a lifelong habit of studying his profession. Harding was a natural schoolmaster who led a small group of lieutenants through weekly tactical exercises that broadened into discussions of military history and current operations in Europe. Few people had a greater influence on Bradley than Harding, who convinced him that an officeholder had to begin studying at the very commencement of his career and continue to study regularly if he hoped to master his profession.
| Bradley (second from left) and the West Point baseball team. He believed that sports taught the art of grouping cooperation and took pride in the fact that every member of the 1914 team who remained in the Army became a general officer. |
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International crises soon put Lieutenant Bradley's developing military skills to their first, rather small-scale test. When the ceremonious war in Mexico spilled over the border into the The states, American regulars under the command of Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing marched into Mexico in pursuit of the rebel commander, Pancho Villa. Considering of the possibility of actual war with United mexican states, the War Department called up the Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico National Guard and ordered more Regular Army units to the edge. Amid them was the 14th Infantry, which went into camp at Douglas, Arizona. Although Bradley saw no activeness on the Mexican border, he learned a good deal about handling troops in field atmospheric condition, conducting long motor marches, and maintaining discipline, morale, and training in unfavorable circumstances. In the midst of the crunch, Congress passed the National Defense Act of 1916, doubling the authorized size of the Regular army and increasing the number of infantry regiments to sixty-five. As a consequence of the expansion, Bradley found himself promoted to commencement lieutenant seventeen months after graduating from Due west Point. The crisis with Mexico passed, but Bradley and his regiment remained in the Southwest until after the U.s. alleged state of war on the German Empire.
World State of war I and the Interwar Years
The 14th Infantry was stationed at Yuma, Arizona, when the United States formally entered Globe War I. Near immediately, Bradley was promoted to captain as the Army began to mobilize. However, rather than moving to Europe, his regiment received orders to render to the Pacific Northwest, where information technology would police the copper mines in Montana. Throughout the side by side year, Bradley desperately tried to take himself assigned to a unit bound for the fighting in France, but to no avail.
Bradley was promoted to major in August 1918, and shortly thereafter he received the much-desired orders to gear up for duty overseas. The 14th Infantry, with Bradley in command of its second battalion, became part of the new 19th Infantry Partition, which was organizing at Camp Contrivance, well-nigh Des Moines, Iowa. But the great flu epidemic of 1918, coupled with the armistice in November, ensured that the division would never go overseas. With the war over, the Army rapidly demobilized and a frustrated Bradley never saw the battlefields of the Western Front. He was and then posted to South Dakota State College, where he remained a year as an assistant professor of armed forces science, reverting to his permanent grade of captain.
In September 1920 Bradley began a four-yr tour of duty as an instructor of mathematics at W Indicate, while Douglas MacArthur was serving as superintendent. Aside from the rigor of studying mathematics, which Bradley believed stimulated one'southward powers of reasoning, he devoted his time at the War machine University to the written report of military history. He was particularly interested in the campaigns of William T. Sherman, whom he considered a master of the war of movement. By the fourth dimension he was ordered to attend the avant-garde course at the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, in the autumn of 1924, following a spring promotion to major, he had concluded that many of the men who had fought in French republic had been misled by the experience of that static war; for Bradley, Sherman'due south campaigns were more than relevant to whatever future state of war than the battle reports of the American Expeditionary Forces.
Since the curriculum at Fort Benning stressed open up warfare, it gave Bradley the opportunity to become a specialist in tactics and terrain and the bug of fire and movement. He graduated second in his form, behind Leonard T. Gerow, another officer with whom he was to serve years hence, and ahead of officers who had combat experience in World War I. It was at Fort Benning that Bradley concluded that his tactical judgment was as good as that of men tested in boxing. His Infantry School experience was crucial; every bit he afterward explained, "the confidence I needed had been restored; I never suffered a faint center once again."
When his tour at Fort Benning concluded, Bradley was assigned to the 27th Infantry of the Hawaiian Sectionalization. There he met George S. Patton, Jr., the segmentation Thou-two, whose future would be intertwined with his for many years. Following a stint with the Hawaiian National Guard, Bradley returned to the United states in 1928 as a student at the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The premier school for professional soldiers, Leavenworth was the eye of the needle through which any officer who hoped for success in the Ground forces had to pass. Bradley was somewhat critical of the predictable and unimaginative pedagogy he received there, as he was of the hoary "school solutions" the faculty presented. Notwithstanding, he judged that his year in Kansas stimulated his thinking almost tactical issues and, voicing a conclusion shared by many of his peers, believed the real importance of the Control and General Staff Schoolhouse was that information technology gave his unabridged generation of officers a common tactical linguistic communication and technique for problem solving.
More important than Leavenworth, however, was Bradley's next consignment every bit an instructor at the Infantry School in 1929. The banana commandant was George C. Marshall, who was determined to streamline and simplify tactical command procedures. Under Marshall'south guidance, instructors encouraged student officers to think
creatively about tactical problems and simplify doctrine so that information technology was meaningful for denizen-soldiers rather than just for an Army composed of professionals. Bradley judged that no 1 had ever had a more profound influence on him, either personally or professionally, than Marshall. Once having given a man a job, Marshall did not interfere, every bit long as the officeholder performed as he expected. Impressed with the results of Marshall's methods, Bradley adopted an identical easily-off style of command. Bradley's iv-year Infantry Schoolhouse assignment also brought some other intangible benefit. During this bout Bradley associated with a mitt-picked company of "Marshall men," some of whom, including Forrest Harding, he had known before. Others, both faculty and students, and including such men as Joseph Stilwell, Charles Lanham, W. Bedell Smith, Harold Balderdash, Matthew Ridgway, and J. Lawton Collins, were to concord important assignments in a very few years. Marshall'south personal didactics, in part through the informal seminars he conducted for his staff, and the stimulating visitor of a grouping of officers devoted to the written report of their profession rounded out Bradley'due south tactical education. Crucial to Bradley's future in the Army was the fact that he had fabricated a favorable impression on Marshall.
Bradley graduated from the Army State of war College in 1934 and returned to West Signal to serve in the Tactical Department. At Fort Benning he had taught and associated with men who would lead divisions and corps during World War II. At West Point he trained cadets-including William C. Westmoreland, Creighton Westward. Abrams, Jr., Bruce Palmer, Jr., John L. Throckmorton, and Andrew J. Goodpaster, Jr.-who would control battalions in that war and lead the Regular army in the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Bradley was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1936. When he left Due west Point in the summertime of 1938 for duty on the State of war Department General Staff, he had spent some sixteen years in Army schools every bit student and instructor.
After a brief period in the G-1, the Ground forces staff's manpower and personnel office, Bradley became assistant secretary of the General Staff in the Office of the Army Primary of Staff. At times inundated by the flood of paper, he and Orlando Ward, later assisted past Bedell Smith, filtered the mass of data directed at the Chief of Staff, framing problem areas and recommending solutions. In February 1941, as the Regular army was expanding in anticipation of war with the Axis Powers, Marshall promoted Bradley from lieutenant
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| Lt. Col. Omar Bradley (center) and members of the Tactics Section at W Bespeak, 1937. He taught cadets who would lead the Army in the 1960s and 1970s. |
colonel to brigadier full general, skipping the rank of colonel, and sent him to Fort Benning to command the Infantry School.
At Fort Benning Bradley supported the formation and training of tank forces, specially the new 2d Armored Division, then commanded past George S. Patton, Jr. He also promoted the growth and development of the new airborne forces, which would play a critical part in the coming war. His most important contribution to the Regular army, even so, was the evolution of an officer candidate school (OCS) model that would serve as a paradigm for similar schools across the Army. When war came, the OCS system would turn out the thousands of lieutenants needed to atomic number 82 the platoons of an Army that somewhen fielded eighty-nine divisions. The Infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning lone would produce some 45,000 officers. When the Us formally entered Earth State of war Ii on 8 Dec 1941, Bradley, at Marshall's suggestion, was preparing a paw-picked successor to take command at Fort Benning. Marshall had bigger challenges in mind for Bradley as the Army prepared for combat.
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| Brig. Gen. Omar Bradley, commander of the Infantry School at Fort Benning, congratulates newly qualified parachute officers of the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion in 1941. Bradley vigorously pursued the evolution of airborne forces and was instrumental in the development of the Officer Candidate School system that would produce thousands of officers during World War Two. |
World War II
Two months later Pearl Harbor, Bradley took control of the 82d Infantry Division. The unit had compiled a distinguished combat record in World State of war I, only it had been reactivated with draftees leavened past merely a minor Regular army cadre. The new commander saw to it that incoming drafts of soldiers were welcomed with military bands; when they were marched directly to their cantonments, they found uniforms, equipment, and a hot meal waiting for them. Such practices did much to boost the morale of oftentimes bewildered inductees. Disturbed by the poor physical condition of the new soldiers, Bradley instituted a rigorous physical training program to supplement a tough military grooming schedule. He likewise invited Alvin York, Medal of Honor winner and the well-nigh famous alumnus of the division, to visit his troops. Based on York's remark that most of his own combat shooting had been washed at very brusque range, Bradley adjusted the division's marksmanship plan to include a combat form in firing at targets only twenty-five to fifty meters away. Bradley looked frontwards to taking the 82d Division to Europe or the Pacific, but barely four months later he received orders
from General Marshall to take command of the 28th Infantry Division, a National Guard unit that Marshall believed needed help badly. Bradley turned over the 82d to Matthew Ridgway and went to Camp Livingston, Louisiana, to address the problems of the Keystone Division.
Amid the offset steps he took was the reassignment of junior officers who were over age and unable to cope with field conditions; roughly 20 percent of all National Guard showtime lieutenants in 1941 were forty or older. The more senior officers who lacked the noesis or skills for battalion and regimental command also establish themselves transferred. He also reassigned officers and sergeants inside the segmentation to eliminate the "habitation-townism" peculiar to 1930s National Baby-sit units, a organisation that hampered proper discipline. Just the worst issues of the 28th Division were non of its ain making. The division had been repeatedly levied for officers and noncommissioned officers; over ane,600 had gone to OCS or aviation training since the division was mobilized. Bradley put a stop to this drain in manpower and obtained new drafts from OCS to replace the losses. He then began a systematic grooming program that included the intense physical conditioning he had found necessary in the 82d. He too led the segmentation through increasingly more complex tactical exercises at the battalion and regimental level, culminating in amphibious assault training on the Florida coast.
Long experience gained from Regular army schools and from training recruits in World War I had much to do with Bradley's ability to plough the 82d and 28th into well-trained gainsay divisions. But he too clearly understood that denizen-soldiers were not professionals and that the Army could not treat them as such. He adopted George Marshall'south view that doctrine had to be simplified for execution past soldiers and leaders who had no previous military machine feel. Indeed, his successes in 1942 owed much to an understanding of the subject field and training needs of citizen-soldiers that derived from Marshall's guidance at the Infantry Schoolhouse a decade earlier.
In February 1943 General Marshall, having previously remarked that Bradley had been requested for corps command five or six times, ordered him to Austin, Texas, to take over X Corps. Earlier Bradley assumed that command, however, the orders were countermanded and he constitute himself en route to Northward Africa to piece of work for his classmate Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom he had occasionally seen simply with whom he had non served since graduation from Due west Bespeak.
Bradley arrived in N Africa in the aftermath of the Kasserine Pass debacle. He constitute a much-chastened Eisenhower worrying most the failure of American units to perform well confronting their more than experienced
| Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley, Ii Corps commander, consults with staff members. Bradley assumed command of 2 Corps, his first combat command, in April 1943 and led information technology through the residue of the North African campaign and the fighting in Sicily. | |
German opponents. The local British commander had been especially harsh in assessing the initial gainsay performance of the Americans. Bradley'due south assignment was to serve every bit Eisenhower's eyes and ears, reporting on the state of affairs on the Tunisian forepart and the means that might be used to right the problems that were by and so evident to everyone.
One of his showtime important decisions was to advise Eisenhower to relieve Maj. Gen. Lloyd Fredendall from command of II Corps, whose troops had demonstrated a especially poor performance at Kasserine. Eisenhower had been reluctant to have such drastic action despite the recommendations of cardinal subordinates, merely he finally acted after consulting with Bradley. When Eisenhower assigned George Patton to supplant Fredendall, he besides asked Bradley to become the corps deputy commanding general. Bradley and then succeeded to command of the corps on 15 Apr when Patton left to keep his interrupted planning for landings on Sicily. Although Patton had restored discipline and confidence to II Corps, it still lacked the prowess of British units. Bradley's chore throughout the remainder of the North African entrada was to convince both his men and the British that the American soldier was as adept every bit whatsoever and that American leaders were as tactically adept as their Allied and Axis counterparts.
During the final battles of April and May 1943 he accomplished his goal. The Two Corps attacked n toward Bizerte, fugitive obvious routes of approach and using infantry to attack German defenders on the high basis before bringing up the armor. The 34th Infantry Division, maligned by the British every bit a unit with poor fighting qualities, fought the crucial boxing and dislodged the Germans from strong defensive positions astride Hill 609, the highest terrain in the corps sector. With tanks in the assail role, the 34th Segmentation infantry cleared the obstruction, assuasive Bradley to send the 1st Armored Division through to victory. American troops entered Bizerte on 7 May, and ii days later more than 40,000 German language troops surrendered to II Corps.
The fighting in North Africa was over, and the U.S. Army, as Bradley put information technology, had "learned to crawl, to walk-then run." He then immediately went to Algiers to help plan the invasion of Sicily, the next objective in the Allied timetable approved at the Casablanca Conference. Capture of Sicily would, the Allied leaders hoped, knock Italy out of the war and clear the cardinal Mediterranean of Centrality forces. It might also divert German forces from the Eastern Front end, thereby partially satisfying Josef Stalin's continuing demands that the western Allies open a second front against the Germans.
| Ground forces Master of Staff George C. Marshall (eye) and Ground forces Air Forces commander General Henry "Hap" Arnold confer with Bradley on the beach at Normandy, France, in 1944. |
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Under command of George Patton's Seventh Army, Bradley's corps was in the vanguard of the Performance HUSKY assault, and it moved inland against negligible resistance. The Germans and Italians were non surprised by the landings, however, and hard fighting began the 2d mean solar day and characterized the remainder of the 38-day campaign. Past 16 Baronial 1943, British and American forces held Sicily.
The conquest of Sicily ultimately persuaded Italia to withdraw from the war, simply the Centrolineal performance was less than a complete success. Advancing from the south of Sicily along two axes of approach in a classic pincer converging on the port of Messina, the Allies allowed the German units to escape across the narrow straits to the Italian mainland. Grouse between American and British commanders also connected. On the positive side, American troops had learned a lot more about fighting. They had conducted their first opposed amphibious landings and airborne assaults, brought four new divisions successfully into battle, and taken a field army into state of war for the first time. It was during the fighting in Sicily that war contributor Ernie Pyle "discovered" Bradley and established his reputation as the "soldier'due south general." Whatsoever its defects, the boxing for Sicily was an important step in preparing Bradley for his next job. Shortly after the fighting ended, Eisenhower told him that he would control an ground forces and then activate an army group in the forthcoming landings in France.
Bradley traveled to the United States to select the staff for his new command, the Start U.South. Army, and then stationed at Governor's Isle, New York.The headquarters deployed to England in October 1943, and Bradley took on the dual task of First Regular army commander and acting commander of the skeletal 1st U.Southward. Ground forces Group (afterward redesignated the 12th Army Group). Eisenhower, appointed as Supreme Allied Commander for the invasion of Europe, arrived in England in January 1944. Soon thereafter he confirmed that Bradley would command the American army group when it was activated. Merely until the landings were secure, all American ground forces in northern France would be under the temporary command of General Sir Bernard 50. Montgomery, who likewise allowable the British and Canadian footing contingents.
For Performance OVERLORD, the assail on the Normandy beaches, the First Army was assigned three corps. The Five Corps was commanded by Leonard T. Gerow, whom Bradley had known since his advanced form days at Fort Benning, and Vii Corps was led by J. Lawton Collins, a partitioning commander who had proved himself in the Pacific and a human whom Bradley had known during his education tour at Benning. The Xix Corps, under command of Charles H. Corlett, would follow the other corps ashore to plant the beachhead. Almost alone
among the senior Centrolineal commanders, Bradley believed in the value of airborne landings both to limit enemy access to the coast from inland and to spread confusion in the German defenses. He therefore fought to take the 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions dropped behind UTAH Beach on D-24-hour interval.
During the months earlier the invasion, Bradley supervised the refinement of assail plans and troop training. He and his corps commanders finally decided that the assaults would be led by the 29th Infantry Division and elements of the experienced 1st Infantry Sectionalisation on OMAHA Beach, and by the 4th Infantry Segmentation on UTAH. Both set on forces would be supported by the new duplex bulldoze M4 tank, a Sherman tank fitted with flotation skirts and propellers, which could be launched from landing craft and swim ashore. Bradley decided American units would non use other specialized tanks, including the "flail" tanks that cleared minefields and tanks with flamethrowers, because they required specialized training and an all-encompassing separate supply and maintenance system. Some accept contended that this decision to keep a lean supply arrangement cost the lives of many soldiers who died from mines and booby traps on the Normandy beaches and during the subsequent breakout.
On the morn of 6 June 1944, Bradley was aboard the cruiser USS Augusta, his headquarters for the invasion. He received word that the Germans had moved the 352d Infantry Division into the expanse for training, an unfortunate event that lengthened the odds against V Corps. However, he did non alter his battle plans. At 0630 American troops and their Allies assaulted the Normandy beaches. Meeting just light resistance, the 4th Infantry Sectionalization suffered very few casualties and quickly secured UTAH Embankment. The Seven Corps pushed half dozen miles inland by the cease of D-Day.
On OMAHA Beach the situation was a nightmare. The German regiment there, reinforced by troops from the division that had unexpectedly arrived, occupied terrain favorable for defense and put up a stiff resistance. Landing arts and crafts launched most of the amphibious tanks too far out from the shore, where nigh foundered and sank. The aerial battery was almost completely ineffective in suppressing High german defenses, and many of the assail troops were put ashore at the wrong places. For several hours the situation appeared to be a disaster in the making. Casualties were heavy, particularly among the sabotage engineers assigned to articulate the embankment obstacles for following assault waves. The infantry, pinned down on the tide line, was as well hard hitting. In the end proficient leadership and naval gunfire resolved the state of affairs. Determined and courageous American commanders led their men in
desperate local fights confronting the German language position and slowly established a foothold. U.Southward. Navy destroyers, ignoring the hazards, navigated close inshore and fired directly into German strongpoints. When Gerow finally established communications with Bradley, his get-go bulletin was "Thank God for the U.S. Navy!"
Hamstrung by scanty communications with the troops aground, Bradley quietly worried over what appeared to be a developing catastrophe. For a time he considered evacuating the troops and sending follow-on assaults to UTAH or the British beaches. At last, in the early afternoon, Gerow reported that his men were kickoff to reach the bluffs above the beach. By evening the crisis was past, and V Corps had 35,000 soldiers ashore on a beach 5 and a half miles long and a mile and a one-half across at its widest bespeak. At a price of around 2,500 casualties, the Allies had established themselves firmly on the Normandy coast. On 9 June Bradley moved First Army headquarters ashore.
British and American forces repelled German counterattacks against the beachhead throughout the first half of June, including an set on past the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division designed to pierce the junction betwixt the U.S. V and 7 Corps. Using information code-named ULTRA (from the Ultra Secret nomenclature assigned to the sophisticated code-breaking procedure), Bradley shifted the newly arrived 2d Armored Sectionalisation to crush the High german attack. Meanwhile, follow-on forces were steadily landing on the invasion beaches, and the Centrolineal lodgment became secure. Over the following month Bradley sent VII Corps to capture the port of Cherbourg and expanded the beachhead into the hedgerow country behind the coast, preparing for the breakout envisioned in the OVERLORD plans.
The beginning attempts at breaking out of the lodgment failed in the face of heavy High german opposition. Bradley then conceived a plan for a ane-corps assail centering on St. Lo, using heavy air support. The operation, dubbed COBRA, began on 25 July with a saturation bombing attack that fell on both American and German positions. Collins' Vii Corps nonetheless assaulted on schedule. After pushing through the German lines, he committed ii armored divisions to exploit the breakthrough. On Collins' right flank, Troy Middleton, commanding Viii Corps, also released an armored partitioning afterward his infantry broke through the initial German resistance. In a 35-mile advance, the American armor reached Avranches and began a rout of the Germans that lasted just over a month, by which time the Allies had airtight on the German frontier.
With the breakout, Eisenhower activated 3rd U.S. Army with George Patton in command. Bradley turned Showtime Army over to
Courtney Hodges and activated 12th Army Group, which on 1 August causeless command of 21 divisions comprising some 903,000 men. No officeholder in the U.S. Army had any applied feel with the operations of an regular army group-few had even served in a division earlier Globe War Ii. Bradley finally decided to model his control technique on that of Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander, the British general with whom he had served in the Mediterranean. Instead of providing only broad operational direction, as the vague prewar American doctrine foresaw for regular army group commanders, Bradley planned to exercise shut control of his armies. He decided to assign broad missions to his principal subordinates and then carefully monitor operations, intervening on a selective basis when he thought necessary.
The first opportunity to test himself came the week subsequently twelfth Regular army Group was activated. In what Bradley considered one of the worst mistakes anyone made in Earth State of war 2, Adolf Hitler ordered his commanders to seek a decision in Normandy. Rather than withdraw, the Germans reinforced their units. Alerted by short-detect ULTRA information, Bradley reinforced the Seven Corps sector at Mortain, where the German attack seemed aimed. The 30th Infantry Division, supported by tactical air power, decimated the assaulting forcefulness. Seeing the potential for a larger success, Bradley devised a plan to trap the bulk of the retreating High german forces west of the Rhine, a long encirclement that he envisioned as a war-winning maneuver. In the upshot the American and Canadian armies did not see at Falaise in time to trap all the Germans, and many escaped to fight again. The boxing nonetheless marked the stop of the fighting in Normandy, where Allied forces had literally destroyed two German armies.
In practical terms, the battle determined the hereafter course of the state of war. Hard fighting in Normandy, followed past the pursuit across French republic through the end of September 1944, wounded or killed more than than 500,000 Germans and destroyed many divisions. The famous 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Sectionalization, for example, literally dissolved as a fighting formation. Taken together, Normandy, the Falaise pocket, and the retreat across the Seine reduced the High german Ground forces to an infantry force with limited tactical mobility. German equipment losses were staggering: some xv,000 vehicles were destroyed or abandoned. Less than 120 of more than 1,000 tanks and assault guns committed to battle in Normandy remained operational in September. Few panzer divisions could muster more than a dozen tanks.
The Allied armies were quick to exploit High german weaknesses, closing to the borders of Germany by the fall. Assigning Hodges and Patton the mission of pursuing the retreating enemy, Bradley gave
both commanders wide latitude of activeness and turned his attention to the growing problem of supplying forces that daily moved further away from the invasion beaches. Only neither he nor Eisenhower could significantly meliorate the logistical situation until the Allies captured usable ports. Past September the 12th Army Grouping was running out of supplies and encountering stronger German resistance along the Siegfried Line. With priority given to the Market place-GARDEN functioning, an attempt to capture Arnhem and a bridge over the Rhine River, large-scale American movement essentially halted and First and Third Armies connected only limited offensives.
On 16 December 1944, the Germans attacked in the Ardennes, an area that Bradley had left thinly garrisoned as a calculated risk. Eisenhower quickly determined to convert the assail into an opportunity to break the back of the High german Army. Bradley, agreeing with Eisenhower'south cess, reorganized his forces to meet the threat and exploit the situation. He directed Patton to reorient his attack to the north, with the aim of relieving American forces besieged in Belgium. In what was probably his most impressive performance, Patton marched his divisions almost i hundred miles in bad weather in 2 days to attack the German left flank and link up with the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne.
Meanwhile, Commencement and 9th Armies fought tenaciously to contain the German set on, turning the Ardennes offensive into an unmitigated catastrophe for the German Army. German losses were non substantially higher than American losses in the fighting, but the battle cost the Germans the bulk of their skilled troops, eradicated their operational reserve, and destroyed great quantities of modem equipment. The Boxing of the Bulge fabricated the dandy victories of 1945 possible considering it eliminated the German Army's ability to resist the concluding offensives into its homeland. In January 1945, having defeated the German winter attacks, Bradley began a serial of continuous offensives that smashed through the Siegfried Line, crossed the Rhine, crushed the remains of the High german forces in the Ruhr, and finally met the Soviets on the Elbe River.
Since September 1944, and even earlier, the Allied commanders had debated the all-time fashion to end the state of war militarily. Eisenhower, in consultation with Bradley and Montgomery well before D-Twenty-four hour period, had stipulated that the main Allied objective in Germany was the Ruhr valley, Germany's industrial heartland. A threat to that critical area would oblige the Germans to commit their remaining footing forces for its defense. In general terms, Eisenhower and his senior commanders envisioned an encirclement of the Ruhr that would capture the German language industrial base and the majority of the High german Army at the aforementioned
fourth dimension, thus bringing the war to a shut. The means of doing this remained controversial. Montgomery favored a single "knife-like thrust" from the northward, under his command, to which all Allied resources would be committed. Even so, that concept, as embodied in Operation Market-GARDEN, proved unsuccessful. In contrast, Bradley supported Eisenhower'southward conclusion to pursue a broad-front attack that was equally important for domestic political reasons equally for military ones. Once at the Rhine, chance presented him with the opportunity for improvisation.
The retreating Germans had methodically destroyed Rhine River bridges to strengthen the defensive value of their natural barrier. The 9th Armored Division, nether the command of Bradley's classmate John Leonard, captured intact the Ludendorff railway span at Remagen on 7 March. The structure had been rigged for demolition with explosives, but inexplicably had not been destroyed in a timely way. Informed of that stroke of luck, Bradley ordered First Ground forces commander Courtney Hodges to button as many forces as possible across to the east bank of the Rhine and secure the bridgehead. He so obtained Eisenhower'south approval to put every bit many as 5 divisions into an attack.
Bradley saw the possibility of now striking at the Ruhr from the s, up the valley from Frankfurt, rather than from the British sector in the due north. By 16 March he had pushed two corps over to the east bank of the Rhine and kept them moving toward the main north-south autobahn. At the aforementioned time he ordered Patton to seek a Rhine crossing in the vicinity of Oppenheim and and so to drive north toward Giessen, where he was to link upwardly with First Army. Patton crossed the Rhine with little difficulty on 23 March and immediately began his attack to the north. By 28 March First Army had driven from the Remagen bridgehead through the Lahn valley and beyond Giessen to Marburg, where its III Corps met XII Corps of Patton's Third Army.
The stage was ready for the final entrada of the state of war in Europe. Bradley planned to swing his Ninth Army due south and First Regular army north in a double envelopment that would encircle the Ruhr and see in the vicinity of Kassel. Once that was accomplished, he intended to item some units to mop up the Ruhr and then attack with Ninth, Get-go, and Third Armies from Kassel toward Leipzig and Dresden, halting at the Elbe River where American forces were to come across the Soviets. The operation adult very much as Bradley planned, with the pincers endmost effectually the Ruhr on 1 April. By 12-13 April American units had reached the Elbe River. Bradley's troops had captured in excess of
315,000 prisoners, more than had been taken at Stalingrad or in Tunisia. In a final offensive Bradley sent Patton'south Third Army to attack forth the Danube into Bavaria, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, cementing the Allied success.
At the end of operations in Europe, Bradley's 12th Army Group was the largest ever commanded by an American full general. It consisted of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges' First, General George Patton's Third, Lt. Gen. William Simpson's Ninth, and Lt. Gen. Leonard Gerow's Fifteenth Armies, a strength comprising 12 corps, 48 divisions, and 1.3 million men. From the time of the TORCH landings in North Africa through the cease of the state of war, Bradley was indispensable to Eisenhower, who greatly valued his perennial calm, understated professionalism, and sound communication. Since 1943 he had been intimately involved in every crucial decision that determined the outcome of the state of war in Europe. The Supreme Commander saw Bradley equally "the primary tactician of our forces," and at the end of the state of war he predicted that Bradley would eventually be recognized as "America'south foremost boxing leader."
Postwar Service
Months before the end of the state of war in Europe, Bradley had asked Full general Marshall to keep him in heed for an eventual control in the Pacific. Once Federal republic of germany capitulated, it became axiomatic that General Douglas MacArthur did not crave some other army group commander for his planned assault on the Japanese home islands. Bradley was notwithstanding in Deutschland when news of the Japanese surrender reached him. President Harry Southward. Truman, it turned out, had other plans for Bradley. On 15 August 1945, he appointed him to direct the Veterans Assistants (VA).
Somewhat unwillingly, Bradley accustomed the chore and began to modernize and restructure that antiquated system to run across the challenges that it would presently face. Before the stop of the state of war the VA was responsible for some 5 one thousand thousand veterans, with a few pensions even so going to cases arising from the War of 1812. By 1946 almost 17 million veterans were on its rolls. Bradley completely rebuilt the organization on a regional basis and insisted on basing his decisions on the needs of the veteran, rather than on the political considerations that had so oftentimes governed in the by in such matters as the location of VA hospitals. With the assist of Maj. Gen. Paul R. Hawley, Eisenhower'south theater surgeon, he completely overhauled a medical care system that Hawley had described as medieval. He also revised and extended the educational benefits of the G.I. Nib, arranged for jobs and job preparation
| | General of the Army Omar Bradley, first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, August 1949. He served in this position until his retirement from armed forces service in 1953. |
programs for men whose simply experience had been as members of the armed forces, established a program of loans for veterans, and administered a staggering growth in veterans insurance and inability pensions. Bradley was unable to accomplish everything he had hoped to practice in his two-yr tenure, just in the cess of the press, he transformed "the medical service of the Veterans Assistants from a national scandal to a model establishment."
On 7 February 1948, Bradley succeeded Eisenhower as Army Chief of Staff and became immersed in a series of problems arising from demobilization of the Regular army, reform of its General Staff organization, and the unification of the military machine. In the international crises which followed-notably the hardening of relations with the Soviets-Bradley fought for both sufficient budgets and modernization investments to meet the requirements imposed by the Truman Doctrine and containment. The results were mixed. Congress rejected Regular army proposals for universal military machine preparation, and the idea of bringing the National Guard under straight Army control foundered on the shoals of political involvement. Bradley did, however, gain presidential support to extend the Selective Service System, and in 1949 he managed to secure an
increase in military pay that brought it into line with equivalent noncombatant pay scales for the first time since well earlier World War II.
After xviii months Bradley turned over the chore of Army Chief of Staff to J. Lawton Collins to accept another appointment. On sixteen August 1949, he became the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and on 22 September 1950 the 81st Congress officially promoted him to Full general of the Regular army with five stars. He was the concluding officer in the American defense establishment to exist promoted to that rank, and the only one since World State of war II.
Bradley served two terms as Chairman of the Articulation Chiefs. Those four years were exceptionally difficult ones. Major disagreements between the Navy and the Air Force over roles and missions had begun while Bradley was Ground forces Principal of Staff and continued into his tour as JCS Chairman. When debates over nuclear deterrence and the value of conventional forces further exacerbated service differences, Bradley played an important role every bit a mediator. Internationally, he was involved in the cosmos of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the rearming of western Europe. He became the first Chairman of the Military Committee of NATO on five Oct 1949, serving in that mail service through 1950 and remaining every bit the U.S. representative to the NATO Military Committee until August 1953. A constant adviser to President Truman through the Korean War, Bradley worked both to comprise the conflict in Asia and to maintain a credible deterrent confronting the anticipated Soviet attack in Europe.
On xv August 1953, Bradley left active service. In the 20-eight years earlier his death in 1981, he occupied himself in industry and was periodically consulted by civilian and armed forces leaders. He retained an active interest in the Army, spoke at its schools, and oftentimes visited units and met with soldiers of all ranks.
A serenity merely distinguished member of a distinguished course of Due west Point graduates, Bradley typified a remarkable generation of Army officers. Disheartened by a perceived lack of success in 1918, he pursued his duty throughout some of the Army's most difficult years. The fact that state of war coincided with Bradley'southward own professional maturity brought him promotion as the beginning general officeholder in his course; George Marshall's confidence assured him a risk to show his mettle.
At that place is no standard against which to compare Bradley as an army group commander. During the fighting in Europe, his at-home and effective presence was important in times of crisis, as was his deft touch on in handling subordinates. Information technology is difficult, for example, to imagine Patton without Bradley, who exploited the talents of that, volatile commander
as well every bit any man could have done. Finally, it was his superb wartime record, combined with his reputation for fairness and honesty, that made him effective in what was probably his virtually difficult job, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
General of the Army Omar Due north. Bradley died on 8 April 1981, just a few minutes after receiving an accolade from the National Institute of Social Sciences. He was cached in Arlington Cemetery on 14 Apr 1981 with full military honors, as the nation mourned the passing of this keen and noble warrior.
Further Readings
There are many books well-nigh Bradley which describe his years of service to the state. Of primary involvement are his own recollections in A Soldier'southward Story (1951) and with Clay Blair in A General'due south Life (1983). Also encounter Charles Whiting'due south Bradley (1971). Because of the close human relationship between Eisenhower and Bradley during the war, standard works on Eisenhower are also valuable sources of data on Bradley. Encounter, for example, Eisenhower'due south Crusade in Europe (1948) and Stephen E. Ambrose's The Supreme Commander (1970). Russell F. Weigley provides a discussion of personalities and strategic and operational considerations in his Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaigns of France and Germany, 1944-1945 (1981). The U.Due south. Army Center of Military History's World War Two series provides detailed accounts of strategic decisions and the campaigns of the war in Europe. Those particularly useful for Bradley are Control Decisions, edited by Kent Roberts Greenfield (1960); Gordon A. Harrison's Cross-Channel Attack (1951); and Martin Blumenson's Breakout and Pursuit (1961).
Source: https://history.army.mil/brochures/bradley/bradley.htm
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