Omar Nelson Bradley (February 12, 1893 – April 8, 1981) was a senior
U.S. Army field commander in North Africa and Europe during
World War II, and a
General of the Army in the
United States Army. From the
Normandy landings through the end of the war in Europe, Bradley had command of all U.S. ground forces invading Germany from the west; he ultimately commanded forty-three divisions and 1.3 million men, the largest body of American soldiers ever to serve under a U.S. field commander. After the war, Bradley headed the
Veterans Administration and became
Chief of Staff of the United States Army. In 1949, he was appointed the first
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the following year oversaw the policy-making for the
Korean War, before retiring from active service in 1953.
General Bradley was the last of only nine people to hold
five-star rank in the
United States Armed Forces.
At West Point, Bradley's graduating class had ultimately 59 generals, with Bradley and
Dwight Eisenhower attaining the rank of
General of the Army.
Bradley was commissioned into the infantry and was first assigned to the
14th Infantry Regiment. He served on the
U.S.-Mexico border in 1915. When war was declared, he was promoted to captain and sent to guard the
Butte, Montana copper mines.
Bradley joined the
19th Infantry Division in August 1918, which was scheduled for European deployment, but the
influenza pandemic and the armistice prevented it.
Between the wars, he taught and studied. From 1920–24, he taught mathematics at West Point. He was promoted to
major in 1924 and took the advanced infantry course at
Fort Benning, Georgia. After brief duty in Hawaii, he studied at the
Command and General Staff School at
Fort Leavenworth in 1928–29. Upon graduating from the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he served as an instructor in tactics at the Infantry School. There the assistant commandant, Lieutenant Colonel George C. Marshall called him "quiet, unassuming, capable, with sound common sense. Absolute dependability. Give him a job and forget it."
[2] From 1929, he taught at West Point again, taking a break to study at the
Army War College in 1934. He was promoted to
lieutenant colonel in 1936 and worked at the
War Department; after 1938 he was directly under
Army Chief of Staff George Marshall. In February 1941, he was promoted to (wartime) temporary rank of
brigadier general (bypassing the rank of
colonel)
[3] (this rank was made permanent in September, 1943). The temporary rank was conferred to allow him to command Fort Benning (he was the first from his class to become even a temporary general officer). In February 1942, he was made a temporary
major general (a rank made permanent in September 1944) and took command of the
82nd Infantry Division before being switched to the
28th Infantry Division in June.
Bradley did not receive a front-line command until early 1943, after
Operation Torch. He had been given
VIII Corps, but instead was sent to
North Africa to be Eisenhower's front-line troubleshooter. At Bradley's suggestion,
II Corps, which had just suffered the devastating loss at the
Kasserine Pass, was overhauled from top to bottom, and Eisenhower installed
George S. Patton as corps commander. Patton requested Bradley as his deputy, but Bradley retained the right to represent Eisenhower as well.
[4]
For the front-line command, Bradley was promoted to temporary
lieutenant general in March 1943 and succeeded Patton as head of II Corps in April, directed it in the final Tunisian battles of April and May. Bradley continued to command the Second Corps in the invasion of Sicily.
Bradley moved to London as commander in chief of the American ground forces preparing to invade France in 1944. For D-Day, Bradley was chosen to command the
US First Army, which alongside the British Second Army made up General Montgomery's 21st Army Group.
On June 10, General Bradley and his staff debarked to establish a headquarters ashore. During
Operation Overlord, he commanded three corps directed at the two American invasion targets,
Utah Beach and Omaha Beach. Later in July, he planned
Operation Cobra, the beginning of the breakout from the Normandy beachhead. Operation Cobra called for the use of strategic bombers using huge bomb loads to attack German defensive lines. After several postponements due to weather, the operation began on July 25, 1944 with a short, very intensive bombardment with lighter explosives, designed so as not to create greater rubble and craters that would slow Allied progress. Bradley was horrified when 77 planes bombed short and dropped bombs on their own troops, including general
Lesley J. McNair:
[5]
"The ground belched, shook and spewed dirt to the sky. Scores of our troops were hit, their bodies flung from slit trenches. Doughboys were dazed and frightened....A bomb landed squarely on McNair in a slit trench and threw his body sixty feet and mangled it beyond recognition except for the three stars on his collar."
[6]
As the build-up continued in Normandy, the
3rd Army was formed under Patton, Bradley's former commander, while General Hodges succeeded Bradley in command of the 1st Army; together, they made up Bradley's new command, the
12th Army Group. It was the largest group of American soldiers to ever serve under one field commander.