General Omar Bradley
Omar Bradley commanded the largest force ever put under an American field commander and was known as the GI's general. Born in Missouri in 1893 to a schoolteacher who died when he was fourteen, he entered West Point in 1911 in the class of 1915, which produced fifty-nine generals and is called the class the stars fell on; Eisenhower was a classmate. He missed combat in the First World War and spent the interwar years teaching and in staff posts, including as an instructor at the infantry school under George Marshall, who kept a notebook of officers to promote. He was sent to North Africa in 1943 as Eisenhower's eyes and ears after the defeat at Kasserine, took over II Corps from Patton, and finished the Tunisian campaign, capturing some 275,000 Axis troops. He commanded II Corps in Sicily under Patton, whom he disliked and whose slapping of a hospitalised soldier he reported. He commanded the American First Army for the Normandy landings of June 1944, planning the assault on Omaha and Utah beaches, and the breakout at Saint-Lô. He then took the Twelfth Army Group, which grew to four armies and some 1.3 million men. He was surprised by the German attack in the Ardennes in December 1944, and Eisenhower temporarily gave Montgomery command of his northern armies, which he resented permanently. He ran the Veterans Administration after the war and was the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, supporting Truman's dismissal of MacArthur. He died in 1981.
- Lived: 1893 CE – 1981 CE
- Nationality: American
- Roles: general
