Five-Star General Omar Bradley died APRIL 8, 1981.
In August 1944, General Omar Bradley led the 12th Army Group in France and Germany, consisting of a million men in four armies.
President Johnson addressed him, May 23, 1964:
"General Bradley, you were the field commander of more American fighting troops than any commander in any era."
Born 1893, in his grandparents' cabin a short distance from Clark, Missouri, Omar Bradley would walk to school with his father.
He helped provide food for his family through hunting and fishing.
Bradley was 12 years old when his father died.
He became a star player on his high school baseball team.
In his autobiography, A General's Life-An Autobiography by General of the Army Omar N. Bradley (Simon & Schuster, 1983), he wrote:
"The editor of the 1909 yearbook wrote of me, 'a good ball player, if he does not look like one.'"
Bradley worked for Wabash Railroad, similar to another Missouri leader, Harry S Truman, who worked for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway.
Like Harry S Truman, who attended a Presbyterian Sunday School, Omar Bradley attended Central Christian Church Sunday School, as he stated in A General's Life (1983):
"Father was raised in the Church of Christ, baptized by immersion at about age 15 and called a 'Christian.'
Mother, like all the Hubbards, was a Baptist, but she converted to the Christian Church.
We walked to the Church of Christ every Sunday, wearing our finest clothes ...
Although mother was not a devout woman, she was a regular Sunday churchgoer, as was I.
We joined the Central Christian Church, an impressive new stone structure with a soaring steeple and a large congregation."
Omar Bradley's church attendance was providential, as it was his Sunday School superintendent at Central Christian Church in Moberly, Missouri, who recommended he apply to West Point.
He wrote:
"Every member of our baseball team at West Point became a general: this proves the value of team sports."
President Eisenhower said, April 29, 1954:
"I thank General Bradley, my old comrade in arms, my classmate from West Point, my great associate in World War II."
Bradley commanded the 2nd Army Corps in North Africa and was Senior Commander of U.S. Ground Forces for the invasion of France.
General Omar Bradley wrote of being on the USS Ancon during the invasion of Sicily, July of 1943, (A General's Life-An Autobiography by General of the Army Omar N. Bradley, Simon & Schuster, 1983, p. 181):
"Paratroopers left him with no immediate reserves ashore to call on. Allen's sector was thus a potential weak link in the beachhead chain.
... And yet I counted our blessings. All our forces had got ashore with negligible casualties and were displaying remarkable aggressiveness.
Surveying the chaotic beaches with binoculars from the bridge of the Ancon I offered a silent prayer of thanks to God. The Allies had returned to Europe to stay."
He later wrote:
"I have returned many times to honour the valiant men who died ... every man who set foot on Omaha Beach was a hero."
After liberating Nazi camps, Bradley stated:
"The smell of death overwhelmed us even before we passed through the stockade. More than 3200 naked, emaciated bodies had been flung into shallow graves. Others lay in the streets where they had fallen. ...
Eisenhower's face whitened into a mask. Patton walked over to a corner and sickened. I was too revolted to speak. For here death had been so fouled by degradation that it both stunned and numbed us."
General Omar Bradley was quoted in Edgar F. Puryear's 19 Stars: A Study in Military Character and Leadership (1981):
"Dependability, integrity, the characteristic of never knowingly doing anything wrong, that you would never cheat anyone, that you would give everybody a fair deal.
Character is a sort of an all-inclusive thing. If a man has character, everyone has confidence in him. Soldiers must have confidence in their leader."
Bradley stated:
- "I learned that good judgment comes from experience and that experience grows out of mistakes."
- "Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death."
- "This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live."
General Bradley was Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, 1948-49, and first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1950.
President Gerald Ford remarked upon presenting Omar Bradley with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, January 10, 1977:
"Military hero, courageous in battle, and gentle in spirit, friend of the common soldier, General of the Army, first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he embodies the best of the American military tradition with dignity, humanity, and honor."
General Omar Bradley stated in an Armistice Day speech, November 10, 1948 (published in Omar Bradley's Collected Writings, Volume 1, 1967):
"To ignore the danger of aggression is simply to invite it ... We shall doom our children to a struggle that may take their lives ...
We know that unless free peoples stand boldly and united against the forces of aggression, they may fall wretchedly, one by one, into the web of oppression."
General Omar Bradley stated on Armistice Day, 1948:
"With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents.
Our knowledge of science has clearly outstripped our capacity to control it.
We have many men of science; too few men of God.
We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.
The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants ...
If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."
In contrast to the totalitarian dictators he fought against, General Omar Bradley stated in his Armistice Day Address, November 10, 1948:
"In the United States it is THE PEOPLE who are SOVEREIGN ... The Government is THEIRS - to speak THEIR voice and to voice THEIR will."
He explained:
"The nation needs men who think in terms of service to their country and not in terms of their country's debt to them."
"Freedom: no word was ever spoken that has held out greater hope, demanded greater sacrifice, needed more to be nurtured, blessed more the giver. . . or came closer to being God's will on earth."
Bradley warned:
"America today is running on the momentum of a godly ancestry, and when that momentum runs down, God help America."
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Image Credits: Public Domain; Description: Omar Bradley, by Clarence Lamont MacNelly (1920-1986); The portrait of General Omar Bradley is reproduced from the Army Art Collection; Date: before 1986; Source: http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/cg&csa/_notes/Omar%20N%20Bradley%20(B).jpg ; This file is a work of a U.S. Army soldier or employee, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, it is in the public domain in the United States; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Omar_Bradley_Portrait.jpg
I’m presently reading The Liberator by Alex Kershaw, covers Bradleys invasion of Sicily..
I read a lot of military history..