Introduction
The early years
The military life
The hour of destiny
Opposing commanders
When war is done
Inside the mind
A life in words
Further reading
Omar Bradley commanded the largest US Army formation to see combat in World War II. Although Bradley was the most significant American tactical commander in the European Theater of Operations (ETO), George S. Patton has overshadowed him in the public mind. Bradley started the war in Patton’s shadow, serving as his deputy in North Africa and commanding a corps during the campaign on Sicily. The controversies surrounding Patton on Sicily derailed his chances for further advancement, and Bradley’s calm professionalism led to his selection to head the main US Army force in Normandy, the First US Army. Following Bradley’s well-executed breakout from Normandy, he was elevated to command the enlarged 12th Army Group which included Patton’s Third US Army. Bradley’s greatest challenge came in December 1944 when the Germans launched an unexpected counteroffensive in the Ardennes. Although Bradley’s reputation suffered from his failure to anticipate the German attack, his prudent planning and foresight helped to exploit the tactical windfall provided by the unexpected capture of the Rhine bridge at Remagen in March 1945. This shifted the focus of Allied operations in the final month of the war, with Bradley’s 12th Army Group playing the central role in the final campaign into Germany. Bradley executed the greatest encirclement operation of the war, the envelopment of Heeresgruppe B in the Ruhr pocket. Bradley served as the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in the early years of the Cold War, including the tumultuous years of the Korean conflict.
An official portrait of Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley taken in the winter of 1945 following the Ardennes campaign. (NARA)
Omar Nelson Bradley was born on February 12, 1893 to John and Sarah (Hubbard) Bradley in Randolph County, Missouri. He was named after the local newspaper editor, Omar D. Gray, a family friend. The Bradley family traced their roots back to Britain in the mid-1700s, first emigrating to Madison County, Kentucky. His paternal grandfather, Thomas Bradley, was a private in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War, though his maternal grandfather had served in the Union Army. The family moved to the Missouri territory early in the 19th century, settling in the farm country near Clark and Higbee. Bradley’s ancestors for the most part were sodbusters – poor farmers and sharecroppers working the land on the Great Plains. Bradley’s father had greater ambitions and after a great deal of self-education, he qualified as a rural schoolteacher. Bradley later described him as “a curious blend of frontiersman, sportsman, farmer, and intellectual,” an avid baseball player and enthusiastic hunter. Bradley picked up many of his own enthusiasms from his father, both his intellectual curiosity and his skill with a baseball bat and a .22-cal. rifle. His upbringing was fairly typical of poor farm kids on the Great Plains. He accompanied his dad to school, and being too poor to own a horse, they walked several miles every day back and forth to the rural classroom. Whatever meat was on the family table came from hunting, and the young Bradley contributed by plinking frogs with his BB gun, and later squirrels with his prized .22-cal. rifle. Bradley was an intelligent and self-motivated student and he was usually at the top of his class. His father died prematurely in January 1908 from pneumonia, placing even greater strains on the family’s meager resources. In the winter of 1909 at the age of 17, Bradley collided with another ice skater on a Moberly park, smashing his front teeth and gums. His family was too poor to permit any dental work, and the damage from this accident helps account for Bradley’s glum visage, as he avoided smiling due to the “jumbled mess” of his front teeth. The situation deteriorated over the years and while stationed at Ft. Leavenworth in 1928, he had to have all his front teeth removed.
A family portrait of Omar Bradley at age seven with his mother Sarah and father John Bradley. (MHI)
Bradley was an enthusiastic sportsman when young and captain of the Moberly High School baseball team of 1908. (MHI)
Bradley graduated from Moberly High School in 1910 at the top of his class and captain of the school’s baseball and football teams. He hoped to pursue further education with the aim of becoming a lawyer. The family lacked the money for such an education, and so he decided to work in the boiler shop of the Wabash Railroad until he could save sufficient funds. A family friend casually mentioned that he might pursue a free government education by attending the US Military Academy at West Point.
Bradley had never seriously imagined a military career, and was motivated more by the prospect of a free education, much the same as another West Point classmate, Dwight Eisenhower. He applied for a nomination from his local congressman, but was informed that another student, Dempsey Anderson, had already been nominated. He was offered a slot as an alternate candidate and in the event Anderson failed while Bradley passed the grueling exams. He was ordered to report to West Point in August 1911. West Point at the time was quite small with only 265 freshmen and a Corps of Cadets of only 600 young men. Bradley’s Class of 1915 proved to be “the Class the Stars fell on.” Of the 265 plebes who arrived in the summer of 1911, 59 eventually became generals and two, Bradley and Eisenhower, won five stars. Bradley proved to be an able though unexceptional student though his skills at baseball earned him a spot on the varsity baseball team in 1912. The military academy stressed the role of sports in fostering group cooperation and, curiously enough, all the members of the 1914 baseball team went on to become generals. Bradley graduated from West Point as the 44th out of a class of 164; he later admitted that he might have displayed a better academic record with more study and less sports. When submitting his choices for service branches, he selected engineers, field artillery, and infantry in that order, as the two first branches had the reputation for prompter career advancement. In the event, he was offered an infantry slot and reported to the 14th Infantry in September 1915 at Ft. George Wright near Spokane, Washington. He was taken under the wing of Lieutenant Edwin Harding, a graduate of the West Point Class of 1909, who sponsored an informal gathering of unit officers to further their education in tactics and military history.
Cadet Omar N. Bradley in front of his locker at the US Military Academy, West Point. (MHI)
The Great War, which was taking place in Europe at the time, had little influence at the remote posts in the American Northwest, but the border troubles with Mexico soon attracted the Army’s attention. In May 1915, the 14th Infantry was ordered to the Mexican frontier as part of General “Black Jack” Pershing’s “Punitive Expedition.” The transfer temporarily delayed Bradley’s marriage to his high-school sweetheart, Mary Quayle, which was postponed until January 1917. After the hostilities with Mexico cooled and the United States became involved in the European conflict, Bradley hoped to transfer to a unit more likely to be dispatched to France. Instead, in January 1918 Bradley’s battalion was deployed to the copper-mining region near Butte, Montana, where the “Wobblies” (International Workers of the World) threatened to shut down the Anaconda mines which the federal government had deemed vital to the war effort. Bradley was appointed commander of Company F and his unit was assigned to maintain the peace in this violent frontier town. By August 1918, Bradley had been given a temporary rank of major. In September 1918, the 14th Infantry was consolidated at Camp Dodge in Iowa as part of the effort to mobilize the 19th Division for deployment to France. In the event, the unit was so hobbled by the Spanish influenza that it remained in camp until after the war’s end.
Bradley’s portrait in the West Point yearbook on his graduation. The accompanying text was written by classmate Dwight Eisenhower, the beginning of a long professional friendship. (MHI)
In July 1919 Bradley was ordered to report to San Francisco to lead a battalion destined for duty with the US Army in Vladivostok, part of the Allied effort to tip the balance in the Russian Civil War against the Communists. Bradley again missed combat when he was held back from deployment to serve on a court-martial. Bradley realized that the peacetime army would likely suffer from calamitous cutbacks, and sought a posting as a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) instructor. He served in this position in the summer of 1920 before being ordered to return to West Point as a mathematics instructor. Another prominent World War II commander, Matthew Ridgway, was transferred at the same time and their paths would cross often in the ensuing years. Such a posting was a considerable honor in the greatly diminished army of 1921, and Bradley served at a time when the academy was undergoing considerable turmoil because the new superintendent, Douglas MacArthur, had instituted a reform program at the famed institution. Omar and Mary Bradley abstained from much of the social life at the post; both were from strict Midwest Christian backgrounds and did not drink or smoke. This did not stop Bradley from becoming involved in the local poker games, regarding his skill at cards as a useful way to supplement his meager captain’s income. Their first child, Elizabeth Bradley, was born while they were stationed at West Point.
Following the usual army career template, Bradley was expecting an overseas posting after finishing his four-year tour at West Point, most likely to Puerto Rico. However, his fellow instructor Matthew Ridgway broke the mold and received an assignment for the senior officers’ advanced course at the Army’s new Infantry School program at Ft. Benning. Major Bradley followed suit and attended in 1924. He graduated second in the class behind Leonard “Gee” Gerow, who would lead V Corps under Bradley’s command two decades later at Omaha Beach. Following his successful academic pursuits, Bradley returned to a more usual Army career track and in 1926 he was pleased to be assigned to Hawaii rather than Puerto Rico. Placed in command of the 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry, he found the post to be a congenial environment to put his Infantry School training into practice. Both the brigade and regimental commanders in Hawaii were veterans of the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1918, but neither was wedded to static trench warfare doctrine. They were impressed that Bradley had graduated with distinction from the recent Ft. Benning course, and they were also convinced that these Pacific duty posts were in the front line of any future conflict with Japan. Hawaii allowed Bradley to practice the type of fire-and-movement tactics taught at Ft. Benning in a real three-dimensional world and not simply as an academic exercise. Hawaii also served as the first contact between Bradley and Major George S. Patton, then the Hawaii Division’s G-2 (intelligence officer). Patton and his wife were wealthy patrons of the social life on post, but the Bradleys with their quiet Midwestern upbringing and lowly social roots were uncomfortable with Patton’s circle. By this stage Bradley had become an avid golfer, but Patton favored the expensive luxury of horses and disdained golf. Patton recruited Bradley for a trap-shooting team, and found him to be a crack shot. A bit prudish, Bradley was upset by Patton’s fluorescent profanity when speaking to the troops. Hawaii was the beginning of an important but troubled relationship between the two future commanders.
Bradley on a picnic in 1915 with his sweetheart and future wife Mary Quayle. (MHI)
Bradley’s tour as an instructor in the Weapons Course at the Infantry School at Ft. Benning in 1930–31 was a critical step in his career due to his contact with George Marshall. The instructors are pictured here: (back row, left to right) Howard Liston, Omar Bradley, Emil Leard, and Freemont Hodson; (front row) M. C. Stayer, Joseph Stilwell, George C. Marshall, W. F. Freehoff, and E. F. Harding.
Bradley might have remained in Hawaii for another year or more but he feared that his proposed appointment as a liaison officer between the Regular Army and the local National Guard would be a drag on his future career prospects. He pressed for an appointment to the Command and General Staff School at Ft. Leavenworth, an inevitable stepping-stone for higher command positions. Bradley viewed the Ft. Leavenworth interlude as perfunctory ticket-punching to advance his career, and found the courses to be dull and unimaginative. On completing his courses, he was offered the posts of treasurer at West Point or instructor at Ft. Benning. Although his wife preferred the comfort of the Military Academy, Bradley preferred the challenge of the Infantry School. It proved to be one of his most important and influential decisions.
Colonel George C. Marshall was in charge of the Infantry School’s curriculum. Marshall had been the operations officer of the 1st Division in France in 1918, and then on the staff of “Black Jack” Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force headquarters planning the St. Mihiel offensive. His impressive performance in this campaign prompted Pershing to appoint him as chief of operations of the First US Army in October 1918 and he ended the war as chief-of-staff of VIII Corps. Bradley later characterized Marshall as “one of the greatest military minds the world has produced.” Even though Marshall was well experienced in static trench warfare, he was a firm believer in the future of maneuver and firepower as the pillars of modern battle. Marshall adopted a more radical teaching approach at Ft. Benning, no longer issuing the officers a set of detailed instructions for them to carry out, but rather providing a tactical problem which they had to solve using their own initiative. Marshall was a ruthless task-master, and more conservative officers who could not adapt to his demanding new style of command were sacked. Bradley was highly impressed with this approach, and it would strongly affect his own command style in dealing with subordinate commanders in the ETO in 1944–45. Of the 80 officers attached to the school, Bradley’s performance was so outstanding that he was selected by Marshall as one of the handful assigned to top slots, in his case the chief of the weapons section which dealt with heavy infantry weapons including the machine gun, mortar and antitank gun. Bradley’s Ft. Benning years also saw other young officers fall into Marshall’s orbit. Captain Walter Bedell “Beetle” Smith was so outstanding in one of Bradley’s classes, that Bradley asked Marshall’s permission to appoint him as an instructor. Marshall was surprised by Bradley’s request because “Beetle” had “all the charm of a rattlesnake.” Marshall entered both Bradley and Smith’s names in his “little black book” of promising young officers. In later years after he became Army chief-of-staff, Marshall would pick “Beetle” Smith when Eisenhower needed an executive officer for the supreme command headquarters; Bradley was also on an upward trajectory under Marshall’s keen eye.
Bradley as a young officer in the 14th Infantry in Arizona in 1916 as part of Black Jack Pershing’s Mexican Punitive Expedition. (MHI)
Bradley was an instructor in the Tactical Department at West Point in 1934–38 and is seen here quizzing a cadet. (MHI)