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To: SunkenCiv; nicollo

First Army commanded by Omar Bradley was the invasion force at Normandy. Bradley didn’t seek attention like Patton and MacArthur so he gets neglected in the popular mind.

My dad was in the 7th Army which was commanded first by Patton and then after Sicily by Alexander Patch. He preferred Patch.

The 7th invaded the French Riviera two months after Normandy. There weren’t enough LSTs and landing craft to do both at the same time.

Calling the Normandy invasion “D-Day” always rankled my dad.

It seems that “D-Day” is a place holder term in every operations order. A massive operation gets planned before the final decision of day and hour is made, so every OPORD uses “d-day” and “h-hour” as place holders for the time to be determined later. Anyway dad had to work with OPORDs in WWII, so he knew how this shorthand worked, and using D-Day as synonymous with June 6th and Normandy stuck in his craw.


26 posted on 06/05/2022 11:06:27 PM PDT by Pelham (World War III is entering on cat's feet.)
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To: Pelham

Patton wasn’t an attention seeker, he just got a lot of attention because he had a lively sense of humor and a smart mouth. As a consequence, Bradley was more to Ike’s liking than was Patton.

In “A Soldier’s Story” Bradley noted that he went along with SHAEF’s official line that there wasn’t anything brewing ahead of The Bulge, and still thought that it was the right line to take, which shows how over his head he was. He got his fourth star because Patton had to receive one for what he’d accomplished, and he couldn’t be outranked by someone he commanded.


28 posted on 06/06/2022 8:58:47 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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