The FReeper Foxhole Profiles General of the Army Omar Bradley

Omar Bradley in World War II

Two months after Pearl Harbor, Bradley took command of the 82d Infantry Division. The unit had compiled a distinguished combat record in World War I, but it had been reactivated with draftees leavened by only a small Regular Army cadre. The new commander saw to it that incoming drafts of soldiers were welcomed with military bands; when they were marched directly to their cantonments, they found uniforms, equipment, and a hot meal waiting for them. Such practices did much to boost the morale of often bewildered inductees. Disturbed by the poor physical condition of the new soldiers, Bradley instituted a rigorous physical training program to supplement a tough military training schedule. He also invited Alvin York, Medal of Honor winner and the most famous alumnus of the division, to visit his troops. Based on York's remark that most of his own combat shooting had been done at very short range, Bradley adjusted the division's marksmanship program to include a combat course in firing at targets only twenty-five to fifty meters away. Bradley looked forward to taking the 82d Division to Europe or the Pacific, but barely four months later he received orders from General Marshall to take command of the 28th Infantry Division, a National Guard unit that Marshall believed needed help badly. Bradley turned over the 82d to Matthew Ridgway and went to Camp Livingston, Louisiana, to address the problems of the Keystone Division.

Among the first steps he took was the reassignment of junior officers who were over age and unable to cope with field conditions; roughly 20 percent of all National Guard first lieutenants in 1941 were forty or older. The more senior officers who lacked the knowledge or skills for battalion and regimental command also found themselves transferred. He also reassigned officers and sergeants within the division to eliminate the "home-townism" peculiar to 1930s National Guard units, a system that hampered proper discipline. But the worst problems of the 28th Division were not of its own making. The division had been repeatedly levied for officers and noncommissioned officers; over 1,600 had gone to OCS or aviation training since the division was mobilized. Bradley put a stop to this drain in manpower and obtained new drafts from OCS to replace the losses. He then began a systematic training program that included the intense physical conditioning he had found necessary in the 82d. He also led the division through increasingly more complex tactical exercises at the battalion and regimental level, culminating in amphibious assault training on the Florida coast.

Long experience gained from Army schools and from training recruits in World War I had much to do with Bradley's ability to turn the 82d and 28th into well-trained combat divisions. But he also clearly understood that citizen-soldiers were not professionals and that the Army could not treat them as such. He adopted George Marshall's view that doctrine had to be simplified for execution by soldiers and leaders who had no previous military experience. Indeed, his successes in 1942 owed much to an understanding of the discipline and training needs of citizen-soldiers that derived from Marshall's guidance at the Infantry School a decade earlier.

In February 1943 General Marshall, having previously remarked that Bradley had been requested for corps command five or six times, ordered him to Austin, Texas, to take over X Corps. Before Bradley assumed that command, however, the orders were countermanded and he found himself en route to North Africa to work for his classmate Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom he had occasionally seen but with whom he had not served since graduation from West Point.

Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley, II Corps commander, consults with staff members. Bradley assumed command of II Corps, his first combat command, in April 1943 and led it through the rest of the North African campaign and the fighting in Sicily.

Bradley arrived in North Africa in the aftermath of the Kasserine Pass debacle. He found a much-chastened Eisenhower worrying about the failure of American units to perform well against their more experienced German opponents. The local British commander had been especially harsh in assessing the initial combat performance of the Americans. Bradley's assignment was to serve as Eisenhower's eyes and ears, reporting on the situation on the Tunisian front and the means that might be used to correct the problems that were by then evident to everyone.

One of his first important decisions was to advise Eisenhower to relieve Maj. Gen. Lloyd Fredendall from command of II Corps, whose troops had demonstrated a particularly poor performance at Kasserine. Eisenhower had been reluctant to take such drastic action despite the recommendations of key subordinates, but he finally acted after consulting with Bradley. When Eisenhower assigned George Patton to replace Fredendall, he also asked Bradley to become the corps deputy commanding general. Bradley then succeeded to command of the corps on 15 April when Patton left to continue his interrupted planning for landings on Sicily. Although Patton had restored discipline and confidence to II Corps, it still lacked the prowess of British units. Bradley's task throughout the remainder of the North African campaign was to convince both his men and the British that the American soldier was as good as any and that American leaders were as tactically adept as their Allied and Axis counterparts.

During the final battles of April and May 1943 he achieved his goal. The II Corps attacked northward toward Bizerte, avoiding obvious routes of approach and using infantry to attack German defenders on the high ground before bringing up the armor. The 34th Infantry Division, maligned by the British as a unit with poor fighting qualities, fought the crucial battle and dislodged the Germans from strong defensive positions astride Hill 609, the highest terrain in the corps sector. With tanks in the assault role, the 34th Division infantry cleared the obstacle, allowing Bradley to send the 1st Armored Division through to victory. American troops entered Bizerte on 7 May, and two days later more than 40,000 German troops surrendered to II Corps.

Allied invasion planners. Left to right, General Bradley,Admiral Ramsay, Air Chief Marshal Tedder, General Eisenhower, General Montgomery, Air Chief Marshal Leigh Mallory, and General Smith. (National Archives)

The fighting in North Africa was over, and the U.S. Army, as Bradley put it, had "learned to crawl, to walk—then run." He then immediately went to Algiers to help plan the invasion of Sicily, the next objective in the Allied timetable approved at the Casablanca Conference. Capture of Sicily would, the Allied leaders hoped, knock Italy out of the war and clear the central Mediterranean of Axis forces. It might also divert German forces from the Eastern Front, thereby partially satisfying Josef Stalin's continuing demands that the western Allies open a second front against the Germans.

Under command of George Patton's Seventh Army, Bradley's corps was in the vanguard of the Operation HUSKY assault, and it moved inland against negligible resistance. The Germans and Italians were not surprised by the landings, however, and hard fighting began the second day and characterized the remainder of the 38-day campaign. By 16 August 1943, British and American forces held Sicily.

The conquest of Sicily ultimately persuaded Italy to withdraw from the war, but the Allied operation was less than a complete success. Advancing from the south of Sicily along two axes of approach in a classic pincer converging on the port of Messina, the Allies allowed the German units to escape across the narrow straits to the Italian mainland. Bickering between American and British commanders also continued. On the positive side, American troops had learned a lot more about fighting. They had conducted their first opposed amphibious landings and airborne assaults, brought four new divisions successfully into battle, and taken a field army into war for the first time. It was during the fighting in Sicily that war correspondent Ernie Pyle "discovered" Bradley and established his reputation as the "soldier's general." Whatever its defects, the battle for Sicily was an important step in preparing Bradley for his next job. Shortly after the fighting ended, Eisenhower told him that he would command an army and then activate an army group in the forthcoming landings in France.

Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall (center) and Army Air Forces commander General Henry "Hap" Arnold confer with Bradley on the beach at Normandy, France in 1944.

Bradley traveled to the United States to select the staff for his new command, the First U.S. Army, then stationed at Governor's Island, New York. The headquarters deployed to England in October 1943, and Bradley took on the dual task of First Army commander and acting commander of the skeletal 1st U.S. Army Group (subsequently redesignated the 12th Army Group). Eisenhower, appointed as Supreme Allied Commander for the invasion of Europe, arrived in England in January 1944. Shortly thereafter he confirmed that Bradley would command the American army group when it was activated. But until the landings were secure, all American ground forces in northern France would be under the temporary command of General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, who also commanded the British and Canadian ground contingents.

For Operation OVERLORD, the assault on the Normandy beaches, the First Army was assigned three corps. The V Corps was commanded by Leonard T. Gerow, whom Bradley had known since his advanced course days at Fort Benning, and VII Corps was led by J. Lawton Collins, a division commander who had proved himself in the Pacific and a man whom Bradley had known during his teaching tour at Benning. The XIX Corps, under command of Charles H. Corlett, would follow the other corps ashore to establish the beachhead. Almost alone among the senior Allied commanders, Bradley believed in the value of airborne landings both to limit enemy access to the coast from inland and to spread confusion in the German defenses. He therefore fought to have the 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions dropped behind UTAH Beach on D-Day.

During the months before the invasion, Bradley supervised the refinement of assault plans and troop training. He and his corps commanders finally decided that the assaults would be led by the 29th Infantry Division and elements of the experienced 1st Infantry Division on OMAHA Beach, and by the 4th Infantry Division on UTAH. Both assault forces would be supported by the new duplex drive M4 tank, a Sherman tank fitted with flotation skirts and propellers, which could be launched from landing craft and swim ashore. Bradley decided American units would not use other specialized tanks, including the "flail" tanks that cleared minefields and tanks with flamethrowers, because they required specialized training and an extensive separate supply and maintenance organization. Some have contended that this decision to keep a lean supply system cost the lives of many soldiers who died from mines and booby traps on the Normandy beaches and during the subsequent breakout.

On the morning of 6 June 1944, Bradley was aboard the cruiser USS Augusta, his headquarters for the invasion. He received word that the Germans had moved the 352d Infantry Division into the area for training, an unfortunate event that lengthened the odds against V Corps. However, he did not change his battle plans. At 0630 American troops and their Allies assaulted the Normandy beaches. Meeting only light resistance, the 4th Infantry Division suffered very few casualties and quickly secured UTAH Beach. The VII Corps pushed six miles inland by the end of D-Day.

On OMAHA Beach the situation was a nightmare. The German regiment there, reinforced by troops from the division that had unexpectedly arrived, occupied terrain favorable for defense and put up a stiff resistance. Landing craft launched most of the amphibious tanks too far out from the shore, where most foundered and sank. The aerial bombardment was almost completely ineffective in suppressing German defenses, and many of the assault troops were put ashore at the wrong places. For several hours the situation appeared to be a disaster in the making. Casualties were heavy, particularly among the demolition engineers assigned to clear the beach obstacles for following assault waves. The infantry, pinned down on the tide line, was also hard hit. In the end good leadership and naval gunfire resolved the situation. Determined and courageous American commanders led their men in desperate local fights against the German position and slowly established a foothold. U.S. Navy destroyers, ignoring the hazards, navigated close inshore and fired directly into German strongpoints. When Gerow finally established communications with Bradley, his first message was "Thank God for the U.S. Navy!"

Hamstrung by scanty communications with the troops ashore, Bradley quietly worried over what appeared to be a developing catastrophe. For a time he considered evacuating the troops and sending follow-on assaults to UTAH or the British beaches. At last, in the early afternoon, Gerow reported that his men were beginning to reach the bluffs above the beach. By evening the crisis was past, and V Corps had 35,000 soldiers ashore on a beach five and a half miles long and a mile and a half across at its widest point. At a cost of around 2,500 casualties, the Allies had established themselves firmly on the Normandy coast. On 9 June Bradley moved First Army headquarters ashore.

British and American forces repelled German counterattacks against the beachhead throughout the first half of June, including an assault by the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division designed to pierce the junction between the U.S. V and VII Corps. Using information code-named ULTRA (from the Ultra Secret classification assigned to the sophisticated code-breaking process), Bradley shifted the newly arrived 2d Armored Division to crush the German attack. Meanwhile, follow-on forces were steadily landing on the invasion beaches, and the Allied lodgment became secure. Over the following month Bradley sent VII Corps to capture the port of Cherbourg and expanded the beachhead into the hedgerow country behind the coast, preparing for the breakout envisioned in the OVERLORD plans.

The first attempts at breaking out of the lodgment failed in the face of heavy German opposition. Bradley then conceived a plan for a one-corps attack centering on St. Lo, using heavy air support. The operation, dubbed COBRA, began on 25 July with a saturation bombing attack that fell on both American and German positions. Collins' VII Corps nonetheless assaulted on schedule. After pushing through the German lines, he committed two armored divisions to exploit the breakthrough. On Collins' right flank, Troy Middleton, commanding VIII Corps, likewise released an armored division after his infantry broke through the initial German resistance. In a 35-mile advance, the American armor reached Avranches and began a rout of the Germans that lasted just over a month, by which time the Allies had closed on the German frontier.

With the breakout, Eisenhower activated Third U.S. Army with George Patton in command. Bradley turned First Army over to Courtney Hodges and activated 12th Army Group, which on 1 August assumed command of 21 divisions comprising some 903,000 men. No officer in the U.S. Army had any practical experience with the operations of an army group—few had even served in a division before World War II. Bradley finally decided to model his command technique on that of Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander, the British general with whom he had served in the Mediterranean. Instead of providing only broad operational direction, as the vague prewar American doctrine foresaw for army group commanders, Bradley planned to exercise close control of his armies. He decided to assign broad missions to his principal subordinates and then carefully monitor operations, intervening on a selective basis when he thought necessary.

The first opportunity to test himself came the week after 12th Army Group was activated. In what Bradley considered one of the worst mistakes anyone made in World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered his commanders to seek a decision in Normandy. Rather than withdraw, the Germans reinforced their units. Alerted by short-notice ULTRA information, Bradley reinforced the VII Corps sector at Mortain, where the German attack seemed aimed. The 30th Infantry Division, supported by tactical air power, decimated the assaulting force. Seeing the potential for a larger success, Bradley devised a plan to trap the bulk of the retreating German forces west of the Rhine, a long encirclement that he envisioned as a war-winning maneuver. In the event the American and Canadian armies did not meet at Falaise in time to trap all the Germans, and many escaped to fight again. The battle nonetheless marked the end of the fighting in Normandy, where Allied forces had literally destroyed two German armies.

In practical terms, the battle determined the future course of the war. Hard fighting in Normandy, followed by the pursuit across France through the end of September 1944, wounded or killed more than 500,000 Germans and destroyed many divisions. The famous 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Division, for example, literally dissolved as a fighting formation. Taken together, Normandy, the Falaise pocket, and the retreat across the Seine reduced the German Army to an infantry force with limited tactical mobility. German equipment losses were staggering: some 15,000 vehicles were destroyed or abandoned. Less than 120 of more than 1,000 tanks and assault guns committed to battle in Normandy remained operational in September. Few panzer divisions could muster more than a dozen tanks.

Left to right: Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley, General Dwight D.Eisenhower, and Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. (National Archives)

The Allied armies were quick to exploit German weaknesses, closing to the borders of Germany by the fall. Assigning Hodges and Patton the mission of pursuing the retreating enemy, Bradley gave both commanders wide latitude of action and turned his attention to the growing problem of supplying forces that daily moved farther away from the invasion beaches. But neither he nor Eisenhower could significantly improve the logistical situation until the Allies captured usable ports. By September the 12th Army Group was running out of supplies and encountering stronger German resistance along the Siegfried Line. With priority given to the MARKET-GARDEN operation, an attempt to capture Arnhem and a bridge over the Rhine River, large-scale American movement essentially halted and First and Third Armies continued only limited offensives.

On 16 December 1944, the Germans attacked in the Ardennes, an area that Bradley had left thinly garrisoned as a calculated risk. Eisenhower quickly determined to convert the attack into an opportunity to break the back of the German Army. Bradley, agreeing with Eisenhower's assessment, reorganized his forces to meet the threat and exploit the situation. He directed Patton to reorient his attack to the north, with the aim of relieving American forces besieged in Belgium. In what was probably his most impressive performance, Patton marched his divisions almost one hundred miles in bad weather in two days to attack the German left flank and link up with the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne.

Meanwhile, First and Ninth Armies fought tenaciously to contain the German attack, turning the Ardennes offensive into an unmitigated catastrophe for the German Army. German losses were not substantially higher than American losses in the fighting, but the battle cost the Germans the bulk of their skilled troops, eradicated their operational reserve, and destroyed great quantities of modern equipment. The Battle of the Bulge made the great victories of 1945 possible because it eliminated the German Army's ability to resist the final offensives into its homeland. In January 1945, having defeated the German winter attacks, Bradley began a series of continuous offensives that smashed through the Siegfried Line, crossed the Rhine, crushed the remains of the German forces in the Ruhr, and finally met the Soviets on the Elbe River.

Since September 1944, and even earlier, the Allied commanders had debated the best way to end the war militarily. Eisenhower, in consultation with Bradley and Montgomery well before D-Day, had stipulated that the main Allied objective in Germany was the Ruhr valley, Germany's industrial heartland. A threat to that critical area would oblige the Germans to commit their remaining ground forces for its defense. In general terms, Eisenhower and his senior commanders envisioned an encirclement of the Ruhr that would capture the German industrial base and the bulk of the German Army at the same time, thus bringing the war to a close. The means of doing this remained controversial. Montgomery favored a single "knife-like thrust" from the north, under his command, to which all Allied resources would be committed. However, that concept, as embodied in Operation MARKET-GARDEN, proved unsuccessful. In contrast, Bradley supported Eisenhower's determination to pursue a broad-front attack that was as important for domestic political reasons as for military ones. Once at the Rhine, chance presented him with the opportunity for improvisation.

The retreating Germans had methodically destroyed Rhine River bridges to strengthen the defensive value of their natural barrier. The 9th Armored Division, under the command of Bradley's classmate John Leonard, captured intact the Ludendorff railway bridge at Remagen on 7 March. The structure had been rigged for demolition with explosives, but inexplicably had not been destroyed in a timely manner. Informed of that stroke of luck, Bradley ordered First Army commander Courtney Hodges to push as many forces as possible across to the east bank of the Rhine and secure the bridgehead. He then obtained Eisenhower's approval to put as many as five divisions into an attack.

Bradley saw the possibility of now striking at the Ruhr from the south, up the valley from Frankfurt, rather than from the British sector in the north. By 16 March he had pushed two corps over to the east bank of the Rhine and kept them moving toward the main north-south autobahn. At the same time he ordered Patton to seek a Rhine crossing in the vicinity of Oppenheim and then to drive north toward Giessen, where he was to link up with First Army. Patton crossed the Rhine with little difficulty on 23 March and immediately began his attack to the north. By 28 March First Army had driven from the Remagen bridgehead through the Lahn valley and beyond Giessen to Marburg, where its III Corps met XII Corps of Patton's Third Army.

The bridge over the Rhine at Remagen. (National Archives)

The stage was set for the final campaign of the war in Europe. Bradley planned to swing his Ninth Army south and First Army north in a double envelopment that would encircle the Ruhr and meet in the vicinity of Kassel. Once that was accomplished, he intended to detail some units to mop up the Ruhr and then attack with Ninth, First, and Third Armies from Kassel toward Leipzig and Dresden, halting at the Elbe River where American forces were to meet the Soviets. The operation developed very much as Bradley planned, with the pincers closing around the Ruhr on 1 April. By 12-13 April American units had reached the Elbe River. Bradley's troops had captured in excess of 315,000 prisoners, more than had been taken at Stalingrad or in Tunisia. In a final offensive Bradley sent Patton's Third Army to attack along the Danube into Bavaria, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, cementing the Allied success.

At the end of operations in Europe, Bradley's 12th Army Group was the largest ever commanded by an American general. It consisted of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges' First, General George Patton's Third, Lt. Gen. William Simpson's Ninth, and Lt. Gen. Leonard Gerow's Fifteenth Armies, a force comprising 12 corps, 48 divisions, and 1.3 million men. From the time of the TORCH landings in North Africa through the end of the war, Bradley was indispensable to Eisenhower, who greatly valued his perennial calm, understated professionalism, and sound advice. Since 1943 he had been intimately involved in every crucial decision that determined the outcome of the war in Europe. The Supreme Commander saw Bradley as "the master tactician of our forces," and at the end of the war he predicted that Bradley would eventually be recognized as "America's foremost battle leader."

Additional Sources:

www.army.mil
www.arlingtoncemetery.com www.brooksart.com
mt.sopris.net
www.history.navy.mil

Today's classic warship, USS Delaware (BB-28)

Delaware class battleship
Displacement. 20,380 t.
Length. 518'9"
Beam. 85'3"
Draft. 27'4"
Speed. 21 K.
Complement. 933
Armament. 10 12"; 14 5"; 8 3"; 2 21" tt.

The USS Delaware (BB-28) was launched 6 February 1909 by Newport News Shipbuilding Co., Newport News, Va.; sponsored by Mrs. A. P. Cahall, niece of the Governor of Delaware; and commissioned 4 April 1910, Captain C. A. Gove in command.

After visiting Wilmington, Del., from 3 to 9 October 1910, to receive a gift of a silver service from the state, Delaware sailed from Hampton Roads 1 November with the First Division, Atlantic Fleet, to visit Weymouth, England, and Cherbourg, France, and after battle practice at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, returned to Norfolk 18 January 1911. She departed 31 January to carry the remains of Chilean Minister Cruz to Valparaiso, sailing by way of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Punta Arenas, Chile. Returning to New York 5 May, she sailed 4 June for Portsmouth, England, where from 19 to 28 June she took part in the fleet review accompanying the coronation of King George V.

In her operations with the Fleet from 1912 to 1917, Delaware joined in exercises, drills, and torpedo practice at Rockport and Provincetown, Mass.; engaged in special experimental firing and target practice at Lynnhaven Roads; trained in Cuban waters participating in fleet exercises; and provided summer training for midshipmen. She passed before President Taft and the Secretary of the Navy in the Naval Review of 14 October 1912 and the next year visited Villefranche, France, while on a cruise with battleships Wyoming (BB-32) and Utah (BB-31). In 1914 and again in 1916 she cruised off Vera Cruz to protect American lives and property during the political disturbances in Mexico.

With the outbreak of World War I in Europe, Delaware returned to Hampton Roads from winter maneuvers in the Caribbean to train armed guard crews and engineers, as well as join in exercises to ready the Fleet for war. On 25 November 1917 she sailed from Lynnhaven Roads with Division 9, bound for Scapa Flow, Scotland. After battling bad weather in the North Atlantic, she joined the 6th Battle Squadron, British Grand Fleet 14 December for exercises to coordinate the operations of the Allied force.

The 6th Battle Squadron got underway 6 February 1918 with an escort of eight British destroyers to convoy a large group of merchant ships to Norway. Cruising off Stavanger 2 days later, Delaware was attacked twice by a submarine, but each time skillful handling enabled the battleship to evade the torpedoes. The squadron returned to its home base at Scapa Flow, 10 February. Delaware participated in two more convoy voyages in March and April, then sailed with the Grand Fleet on 24 April to reinforce the 2d Battle Cruiser Squadron which was on convoy duty and expected contact with the enemy. Only the vessels of the advance screen made any contact, and the chance for action faded.

From 30 June to 2 July 1918 the 6th Battle Squadron, with a division of British destroyers as escort, went to sea to screen American ships laying the North Sea mine barrage. On 22 July King George V inspected the ships of the Grand Fleet at Rosyth, Scotland, and 8 days later, after being relieved by Arkansas (BB-33), Delaware sailed for Hampton Roads, arriving 12 August.

Delaware remained at York River until 12 November 1918, then sailed to Boston Navy Yard for an overhaul. On 11 March 1919 she joined the Fleet in Cuban waters for exercises. Returning to New York 14 April she continued to operate in division, squadron and fleet maneuvers, and participated in the Presidential Fleet Review at Hampton Roads 28 April 1921. She made two midshipmen practice cruises, one to Colon, Martinique, and other ports in the Caribbean, and to Halifax, Nova Scotia between 5 June and 31 August 1922; and a second to Europe, visiting Copenhagen, Greenock, Cadix, and Gibraltar between 9 July and 29 August 1923.

Delaware entered Norfolk Navy Yard 30 August 1923, and her crew was transferred to Colorado (BB-45), a newly commissioned battleship assigned to replace Delaware in the Fleet. Moving to Boston Navy Yard in September, she was stripped of warlike equipment and decommissioned 10 November 1923. Delaware was sold 5 February 1924 and scrapped in accordance with the Washington Treaty on the limitation of armaments.

Big guns in action!

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