In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

183 6 Omar Nelson Bradley Joseph R. Fischer Omar Nelson Bradley became the last general to reach five-star rank, doing so well after the completion of World War II and a year after the creation of the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In many ways he was also the most unusual of those to attain this exalted rank. There was nothing of the showmanship that MacArthur brought to the rank. Nor was there the charm that Dwight D. Eisenhower used to weave and hold together a coalition of wartime partners. The war correspondent Ernie Pyle described Bradley to the American public as looking like a schoolteacher whose face, even in the worst of times, wore a sense of composure that reassured those around him. During the war years there was little flashy in his dress to mark him. He often preferred to wear none of the various decorations he had earned in his career, or, if he did wear a decoration, a lone Bronze Star marked his solidarity with his soldiers. And he was painfully aware of the burden his soldiers bore. In his autobiography he noted , “Those who are left to fight, fight on, evading death but knowing with each day of evasion they have exhausted one more chance for survival. Sooner or later, unless victory comes, the chase must end in the litter or in the grave.”1 Pyle noted that Bradley’s simple style and sparing of lives brought him the nearly universal love and respect of his men. When World War II came to an end, Bradley had commanded from division through Army group level, the latter, Twelfth Army Group, being the largest grouping of U.S. soldiers ever fielded. He had worked to bring the Army from its prewar doldrums to the proficiency it possessed at war’s end, shaping its leadership as well as its approach to war along the way. It would be a road that would take him from stateside posts to the debacle of the Kasserine Pass, to Sicily, then to France, and finally to the heart of the Nazi Reich and victory. 184 Joseph r. fisCher Little in the early years of Bradley’s life suggested his future achievements. He had been born in a log cabin to John Smith Bradley and Sara Elizabeth Hubbard Bradley in Clark, Missouri, on February 12, 1893. His father farmed and taught school. Omar spent his youth hunting and, when he had a chance, playing baseball. There having been little in the way of finances to see him through college, he had taken a job with the Wabash Railroad. When his Sunday school superintendent suggested he apply for admission to West Point as an inexpensive route to an education, he did so. The entrance examinations would prove a challenge. Bradley’s problem was that he had been away from school for a year. His skills in geography , geometry, algebra, and English, the subjects assessed in the examination, had diminished in that time. He hit the books in preparation, and when he took the test, his scores were sufficient to earn him selection as an alternate. When the primary candidate found himself unable to attend, second place became good enough. Bradley’s years at West Point were uneventful. He played on the school’s baseball and football teams, attended to his studies, and graduated 44th of 165 in the class of 1915. He was commissioned a second lieutenant of Infantry, and his first assignment was to the 14th Infantry Regiment at Fort George Wright, outside Spokane, Washington. Perhaps the high point of this assignment was his marriage in June 1916 to Mary Quayle, a woman from his hometown of Moberly, Missouri, whom he had met and courted during his two months of “graduation leave” the previous year. His early postings to variousArmy posts both stateside and overseas (Hawaii) were not particularly noteworthy, except that they included various teaching assignments at West Point and at Fort Benning, Georgia, something Bradley credited with shaping his approach to leadership. Through no fault of his own, he missed combat in World War I and feared that the whims of the personnel system might well have limited his career. In 1920 the Army assigned him back to West Point as a mathematics instructor. In 1924 he attended the Infantry Officer Advanced Course at Fort Benning, receiving permanent promotion to the rank of major at the end of the course. From Benning he received assignment to...

Share