A General Defends The Bradley

January 15, 1986|By Gen. Donald R. Keith, who was the Army deputy chief of staff for research, development and acquistion and later commander of the Army Material Command.

 

Over the last few years, I have become a calloused reader of the well-orchestrated assault by some elements of the media on many of the weapons systems that are a part of the badly needed, long overdue modernization of our defense forces. Most of the articles are flawed at best by selective use of facts wrapped in editorial opinion, or at worst by downright misinformation.

I am not just a casual observer of the most recent program under attack. I was involved with the Bradley Fighting Vehicle from the early 1970s until I retired in June, 1984.

The infantry fighting vehicle never was intended to be an armored personnel carrier like the M113. The requirement from the beginning was for a true fighting vehicle, because in a cooperative effort with our German allies we found that the combination of mechanized infantry in vehicles designed to maneuver and fight with tanks had a synergism on the battlefield that greatly enhanced the effectiveness of the force.

When the situation called for the infantry squad to dismount and occupy a piece of terrain, that option was also available. From the very beginning, the armament for our fighting vehicle was a 25 mm. gun. During the development of the Bradley, a number of studies conducted by both the Army and the office of the secretary of defense suggested that if we did not thicken our antitank guided missile defense in Europe, we risked losing to Warsaw Pact blitzkrieg tactics early in any conflict.

The Army and the secretary of defense agreed that the least costly solution--both in people and dollars--was to add a TOW missile launcher to each Bradley so that every infantry squad could participate in the defensive phase of any battle by engaging enemy tanks at over 3,000 meters.

The bottom line is that the Bradley was designed to fill an urgent need, and its fielding along with the M1 has revolutionized our ability to cope with an adversary who has fielded very similar vehicles in far greater numbers.

Now, bear with me while I run through a brief tutorial on how combat vehicles are designed and the tradeoffs that are inherent in the process. There is no such thing as a totally invulnerable armored vehicle. You can always come up with some sort of gun or missile warhead that will defeat any armor known to man--even though it might be difficult and the weapon unwieldly.

Tough tradeoff analyses drive the designs of the other combat vehicles for the modern battlefield. The designer begins with the main threat the vehicle must survive while performing a specific set of missions--remembering that survivability involves much more than having armor that is impenetrable to threat munitions.

Things like agility, being able to fire accurately on the move and having ammunition and fuel compartmented can be as important as toughness of armor.

In the case of the Bradley (and with every infantry fighting vehicle in the free world and the Warsaw Pact), the judgment has been to armor them to a level that protects the occupants from artillery, mortar and bomb fragments, small arms and the medium-caliber cannons found on other infantry fighting vehicles.

These threats change over time, of course, so product improvements will be called for. In fact, the Army has had R&D requests before the Congress for the last several years to deal with the needed upgrades. These requests did not ask for money to turn the Bradley into a main battle tank as some might suggest.

In fact, all the smoke about ``unrealistic testing`` involves what happens when a tank main gun round or an antitank guided missile hits it. The Army has made no bones about the fact that, if hit by those weapons, it will be penetrated. The only testing that the Army was reluctant to overdo was to demonstrate what we already knew.

Rather, the tests were designed to verify that the Army was getting what it was paying for from the contractor, to check new armors that would help keep pace with threat evolution and to enhance survivability, given a penetration, by new compartmentation techniques.

The results of these tests were quite favorable. The flammability assertions by critics were proved to be grossly understated. The aluminum armor does not burn, as has been repeatedly stated.

No, the Bradley is not a perfect weapon system, but it is the best fighting vehicle in the free world. It has met every performance and reliability specification that it was designed for and has become the well-respected backbone of the Mechanized Infantry and Armored Cavalry units that have received it.

Omar Bradley, the General’s General

Shortly before the American invasion force embarked for Normandy on June 6, 1944, Gen. Omar Bradley, assigned to command 12th Army Group, convened his corps and division commanders at Bristol for a final review. There, General Bradley, the “old schoolteacher” from West Point and the Infantry School, personally conducted the class of generals. D-Day was full of awful imponderables. Facing the unknown, Bradley fell back upon the familiar—the world of the classroom and of the Missouri schoolteacher father he idolized. One by one, he called each general up to a map of France, proffered a pointer, and asked each to describe in detail his outfit’s scheme of maneuver. Maxwell Taylor, one of the generals present that day, could not help but reflect on a similar scene that had unfolded very differently just a year earlier, when George S. Patton Jr. met with his commanders before the assault on Sicily. For Taylor, the contrast between the two men was stark. Patton had “turned on us with a roar and, waving a menacing swagger stick under our noses, concluded: ‘I never want to see you bastards again unless it’s at your post on the shores of Sicily.’” But when Bradley concluded his lesson, he “folded his hands behind his back, his eyes got a little moist, and in lieu of a speech, he simply said, ‘Good luck, men.’”

Omar Bradley entered World War II as Patton’s junior, but by the critical phase of the European campaign had emerged as Patton’s commanding officer. Nevertheless, throughout the war and in the long popular memory of that war, he found himself unable to emerge from the other man’s shadow. Different from Patton in almost every way—personal background, politics, social class, military philosophy, personality, skill set, appearance—Bradley was inextricably bound to him, both during the war and through history’s perspective. Patton’s partisans sometimes say that it was “conventional” commanders like Bradley who thwarted their idol’s genius, and even some of Bradley’s admirers would not entirely disagree with the opinion of 60 Minutes’ professional curmudgeon, Andy Rooney: “It was because we had so few soldiers like [Bradley] that we won the war.” Yet the strange truth was that these antithetical military leaders catalyzed each other through their very opposition. Bradley didn’t like Patton; Bradley even feared Patton. But Bradley had the courage and intelligence to use Patton as no other commander could have or probably would have, and Patton, for his part, hungered to be so used.

World War II: General Omar Bradley

Early Life & Career of Omar Bradley

Born at Clark, MO on February 12, 1893, Omar Nelson Bradley was the son of schoolteacher John Smith Bradley and his wife Sarah Elizabeth Bradley. Though from a poor family, Bradley received a quality education at Higbee Elementary School and Moberly High School. After graduation, he began working for the Wabash Railroad to earn money to attend the University of Missouri.

During this time, he was advised by his Sunday school teacher to apply to West Point. Doing so, he was accepted and entered the academy in 1911. Taking to the academy's disciplined lifestyle he soon proved gifted at athletics.

This love of sports interfered with his academics, however he still managed to graduate 44th in a class of 164.

A member of the Class of 1915, Bradley was classmates with Dwight D. Eisenhower. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he was posted to the 14th Infantry and saw service along the US-Mexico border. Promoted to first lieutenant in October 1916, he married Mary Elizabeth Quayle two months later. With the US entry into World War I in April 1917, the 14th Infantry, then at Yuma, AZ, was moved to the Pacific Northwest. Now a captain, Bradley was tasked with policing copper mines in Montana.

Desperate to be assigned to a combat unit heading to France, Bradley requested a transfer several times but to no avail. Made a major in August 1918, Bradley was excited to learn that the 14th Infantry was being deployed to Europe.

Organizing at Des Moines, IA, as part of the 19th Infantry Division, the regiment remained in the United States as a result of the armistice and an influenza epidemic. With the US Army's postwar demobilization, Bradley was detailed to South Dakota State University to teach military science and reverted to the peacetime rank of captain.

Interwar Years

In 1920, Bradley was posted to West Point for a four-year tour as a mathematics instructor. Serving under then-Superintendent Douglas MacArthur, Bradley devoted his free time to studying military history, with a special interest in the campaigns of William T. Sherman. Impressed with Sherman's campaigns of movement, Bradley concluded that many of the officers who had fought in France had been misled by the experience of static warfare. As a result, Bradley believed that Sherman's Civil War campaigns were more relevant to future warfare than those of World War I.
Promoted to major while at West Point, Bradley was sent to the Infantry School at Fort Benning in 1924. As the curriculum stressed open warfare, he was able to apply his theories and developed a mastery of tactics, terrain, and fire and movement. Utilizing his prior research, he graduated second in his class and in front of many officers who had served in France. After a brief tour with the 27th Infantry, where he befriended George S. Patton, Bradley was selected to attend the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, KS in 1928. Graduating the following year, he believed the course to be dated and uninspired.
Departing Leavenworth, Bradley was assigned to the Infantry School as an instructor and served under future-General George C. Marshall. While there, Bradley was impressed by Marshall who favored giving his men an assignment and letting them accomplish it with minimal interference. Deeply influenced by Marshall's methods, Bradley adopted them for his own use in the field. After attending the Army War College, Bradley returned to West Point as an instructor in the Tactical Department. Among his pupils were the future leaders of the US Army such as William C. Westmoreland and Creighton W. Abrams

Omar Bradley in World War II

Promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1936, Bradley was brought to Washington two years later for duty with the War Department. Working for Marshall, who was made Army Chief of Staff in 1939, Bradley was promoted directly to brigadier general in February 1941, and sent to command the Infantry School. While there he promoted the formation of armored and airborne forces as well as developed the prototype Officer Candidate School. With the US entry into War II on December 7, 1941, Marshall asked Bradley to prepare for other duty.orld W
Given command of the reactivated 82nd Division, he oversaw its training before fulfilling a similar role for the 28th Division. In both cases, he utilized Marshall's approach of simplifying military doctrine to make it easier for newly recruited citizen-soldiers. As a result, Bradley's efforts in 1942, produced two fully trained and prepared combat divisions. In February 1943, Bradley was assigned command of X Corps, but before taking the position was ordered to North Africa by Eisenhower to troubleshoot problems with American troops in the wake of the defeat at Kasserine Pass.
Arriving, he recommended that Patton be given command of the US II Corps. This was done and the authoritarian commander soon restored the unit's discipline. Becoming Patton's deputy, Bradley ascended to command of II Corps in April 1943, when Patton departed to aid in planning the invasion of Sicily. For the remainder of the North African Campaign, Bradley ably led the corps and restored its confidence. Serving as part of Patton's Seventh Army, II Corps spearheaded the attack on Sicily in July 1943.

GEN. OMAR N. BRADLEY DEAD AT 88; LAST OF ARMY'S FIVE-STAR GENERALS

General of the Army Omar N. Bradley, a World War II hero who was the last of the nation's five-star generals, died yesterday in Manhattan. He was 88 years old. 

General Bradley had come to New York to attend a dinner of the local chapter of the Association of the United States Army. He was taken to St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital in midtown in a private car at 7:15 P.M., accompanied by his wife, Kitty, and three military aides, a hospital spokesman said. At 7:35 P.M. he was pronounced dead by Dr. Stephan Lynn, the director of the hospital's emergency services, who said the cause of death was cardiac arrest. 

General Bradley became the only remaining five-star general in 1969 after the death of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. A Pentagon spokesman said the General had remained officially on active duty until his death. as do all five-star generals . He attended President Reagan's inauguration in January in a wheelchair.

'The Honest Mechanic' 

Making up in military competence what he lacked in battlefield glamour, Omar Bradley won four stars in World War II and the sobriquet of ''the honest mechanic.'' He was also known as the ''G.I.'s General'' because of his concern for the ordinary soldier. 

He commanded, successively, a division, a corps, an army and finally the 12th United States Army Group in Europe, which numbered more than 1.3 million combat troops of four armies. In this capacity he was the senior commander of American ground forces in the June 1944 invasion of Europe and the subsequent defeat of the Nazi forces on the Western Front. 

It was General Bradley who linked up with Marshal Ivan Stepanovich Konev of the Soviet Union on the banks of the Elbe River on April 25, 1945, a dramatic meeting that symbolized the eclipse of German arms. 

Earlier, on April 6, when the Germans' defeat appeared inevitable, the general had raised the Stars and Stripes over the frowning fortress of Ehrenbreistein, across the Rhine from Coblenz, and declared that the Germans could have no doubt about the war's outcome. 

''This time we shall leave the German people with no illusions about who won the war - and no legends about who lost the war,'' he said. ''They will know that the brutal Nazi creed they adopted has led them ingloriously to total defeat.'' 

In plowing across France from the Normandy landings of June 1944, and through Germany to the Elbe, General Bradley achieved a reputation as a brilliant tactician, the foundations of which had been laid in his campaigns in North Africa and Sicily. The essence of his tactics was that the best way to fight a modern battle was ''slow and sure.'' 

''Don't let this blitzkrieg business fool you,'' he once said. ''Today we can move our troops into position much faster than ever before. We can throw a whole division (13,000 soldiers) 150 miles a day, instead of 15 as in the last war. And we can exploit our victories with even greater speed.

''But the actual fighting of the battle itself is a different proposition. That's the same old ground battle fought by the soldier on foot, and it takes almost as much time as it ever did.'' 

Tall at just over 6 feet, erect, lanky, bespectacled and bonyfaced, General Bradley was a commander the G.I.'s liked for the care he took with their lives - and because he looked the part of an infantryman. In the field he wore an old, stained trench coat, his G.I. trousers were stuffed into paratroop boots, and his field cap was unpretentious. His voice, a Missouri drawl, was rarely raised in anger. He gave the impression of being a plain, homely, stable man, which indeed he was. Less Flamboyant Than Patton 

A.J. Liebling, who covered a number of the general's campaigns, described him as ''the least dressed-up commander of an American army in the field since Zachary Taylor, who wore a straw hat.'' And contrasting him with the flamboyant Gen. George S. Patton Jr., the late Mr. Liebling wrote:

''After the Green Hornet, with his ruddy, truculent face and his beefy, leather-shathed calves, the new general, lanky and diffidently amiable, seemed a man of milk.'' 

At the same time, however, he impressed a war correspondent as ''a tough, knotty fighter with the tremendous sledge-hammer persistence of General Grant, the shrewdness of a New England horse trader and the personal dignity of character and integrity that can be campared only to the same spacious qualities shown always by Gen. Robert E. Lee.'' 

He also possessed enormous self-confidence. General Bradley recounted the following colloquy that took place when, with Maj. Gen. William B. Kean Jr., he was drawing up an officer roster for the Normandy invasion: 

'' 'What a helluva responsibility this is for you and me to be pulling off the biggest invasion of the war.' ''Kean nodded and stared at the map of Europe on the wall. 'But Bill,' I said frankly, 'who in the Army knows more about it than we?' '' Lacked Combat Experience 

Remarkably, General Bradley had entered the war without combat experience. A ''book general'' and the product of an Army establishment that placed a high premium on honesty and honor, he had spent his prewar years in routine professorial assignments. And by 1940 he was an obscure lieutenant colonel in civilian clothes who rode a bus to work in the old Munitions Building in Washington.

But being a ''book general,'' and the habit of composure that went with it, paid dividends in the war, for he planned each battle and had confidence in his decisions and in his men. To him war was a series of mathematical problems, and he went about the business of reaching his solutions by methods that had been tried and proved. 

Born in the hamlet of Clark, Mo., on Feb. 12, 1893, Omar Nelson Bradley was the son of an underpaid schoolteacher, who died when his son was 13. The boy was named Omar for a Missouri newspaper publisher and Nelson for the family doctor. In Moberly, Mo., where the youth grew up, he acquired a love for hunting and fishing and was known for shooting a gun expertly. His high school yearbook described him as ''calculative.'' 

He went to West Point because his Sunday school superintendent suggested it as the best choice for a poor boy. His class at the United States Military Academy, that of 1915, has become known as the class the stars fell on. It provided more than 30 generals in World War II, including General Eisenhower and Gen. George E. Stratemeyer, Air Force commander in the China-India-Burma theater. Athlete at the Point 

Cadet Bradley played football and baseball. As an outfielder he had a rifle throwing arm. He was graduated 44th in a class of 164. General Eisenhower, a classmate, graduated 25th in the class.

The serious and shy second lieutenant served a tour of duty along the Mexican border in 1916 and received a temporary promotion to major in World War I without seeing service outside the United States. 

After the war, he drew duty as a teacher of military science and tactics at South Dakota State College, and in 1920 he was posted to West Point for four years as an instructor in mathematics. These followed the well-worn groove of a professional soldier in peacetime: teaching courses and taking them; duty at the Command and General Staff School and the Army War College. His most glamorous tour was a hitch in Hawaii. 

In 1939, General Bradley was assigned to the General Staff in Washington. Ten years earlier his work at Fort Benning, Ga., had caught the attention of Lieut. Col. George Catlett Marshall, and in 1941 General Marshall plucked Lieut. Col. Bradley out of Washington and sent him to Fort Benning to convert the tiny Infantry School there into a huge center capable of handling 14,000 officer candidates at a time. 

General Bradley did the job with commendable dispatch and without raising his voice. Later he trained the 82d and 28th Divisions for combat. In Pursuit of Rommel

In February 1943, the situation in Tunisia was deteriorating after the Anglo-American landing in Morocco and Algeria in November 1942. The combined forces had narrowly failed to take Tunis by a coup de main to catch Gen. Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in the rear as Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery's British army had driven it across Libya. GET FIRST ADD

The British, Americans and French were bogged down in mud, cold and discouragement in Tunisia, and there had been much criticism of the quality of the American command in operation.

General Bradley became deputy commander of the United States II Corps, fighting in the Tebessa area under General Patton. His main duty, however, was to act as General Eisenhower's eyes and ears along the entire front. 

The presence of a senior officer out of the chain of command is always irksome to the responsible commanders, and this occasion was no exception. But General Eisenhower appraised his men correctly when he wrote of General Bradley: ''He was a keen judge of men and their capabilities and was absolutely fair and just in his dealings with them. Added to this, he was emotionally stable and possessed a grasp of the larger issues that clearly marked him for high office.'' 

Generals, junior officers and G.I.'s who were dug in among the hills of Tunisia soon became familiar with the grave, low-voiced officer who peered over his glasses in a fatherly fashion as he made it clear to them that he was not on hand to criticize, but to gather information to prevent another setback such as the Americans had suffered at Kasserine Pass. 

General Bradley was placed in command of II Corps after General Patton had received another assignment, and he led it to the capture of the Nazi-occupied French naval base of Bizerte. He was promoted to lieutenant general. Proceeded to England 

When General Patton's Seventh Army and the British Eighth Army, commanded by Field Marshal Montgomery, landed in Sicily, General Bradley still commanded the United States II Corps. Before the campaign was over General Marshall, the Chief of Staff, notified General Bradley that he was to proceed to England, where he was to prepare to command the First United States Army, then muster with British forces for the Normandy invasion across the English Channel. 

When he could spare the time, the General was with the troops in field inspections, watching them run obstacle courses and engage in mortar practice. ''I will see you on the beaches,'' he told the G.I.'s.

Although Field Marshal Montgomery was in direct command of the assault landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the command of the First Army and ultimately of the 12th Army Group was held by General Bradley through the remainder of the fighting in France and Germany. He was ashore fewer than 24 hours after the first Allied units hit the Normandy beaches. 

The First Army, numbering 21 divisions, began its breakout from the coastal regions late in June behind a tremendous carpet of air bombardment. On Aug. 1, the Allied ground force command changed. Field Marshal Montgomery was given command of the British 21st Army Group, while the 12th Army Group was placed under General Bradley, who was responsible only to General Eisenhower. 

In the Normandy beachhead, Field Marshall Montgomery's British and Canadian force had the primary mission of holding the anchor of the line in the Caen area. Meanwhile, plans were made for the American forces to execute an end run around the German defensive positions. Patton Broke Through 

General Patton's Third Army managed a breakthrough at Avranches and fanned southward and finally eastward and northward to close in on the rear of the German Seventh Army at Falaise. Although supporters of Field Marshal Montgomery have pointed out that he was facing more formidable opposition than the 12th Army Group, General Bradley felt that the British should have made a greater attempt to close the narrow Falaise gap through which the greater part of the German Seventh Army managed to squeeze to temporary safety. As it was, more than 70,000 Germans were caught in the trap. 

While the British and Canadian armies were pushing northward along the English Channel, Paris was recaptured by the Second French Armored Division and other elements of the First French Army, aided by General Patton's V Corps and the French Forces of the Interior. As the Germans retreated toward the Rhine, hopes ran high for a quick end to the war in Europe. 

September 1944 was, as General Bradley put it, ''the month of the Big Bust.'' Paris had fallen, and by Sept. 14 the front line extended from a region north of the English Channel port of Dunkirk through Antwerp and Aachen and Metz down to the Swiss and Italian borders. 

On Sept. 3, American tanks broke across the German border near Aachen, and General Bradley pulled up stakes at Dreux, a few miles east of Paris, and established his army group command post at Verdun. 

But the fast-moving Americans had outrun their supply lines and lost their momentum. For the next two months, General Bradley and the impatient General Patton were to wait at the German border for gasoline and ammunition. The dash for the Rhine had fallen just short of success. Bradley vs. Montgomery 

There ensued a lengthy period of tug-of-war between General Bradley and Field Marshal Montgomery in the matter of priority for supplies. German resistance had stiffened on the British front as well as in front of General Bradley's men, and General Eisenhower was called upon to make a decision between the British proposals for operations and those proposed by General Bradley. Field Marshal Montgomery wanted to ram a spearhead through to the industrial Ruhr Valley. General Bradley favored a broad advance along the line into Germany. 

The Germans, however, were massing for a desperate attempt to break through the Ardennes to capture the port of Antwerp. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt had accumulated 600 tanks for this last garrison finish. 

''In the face of this astonishing build up, I had greatly underestimated the enemy's offensive capabilities,'' General Bradley recalled in his memoirs. ''My embarrassment was not unique, for it was shared not only by the army commanders but by Montgomery and Eisenhower as well.'' 

When the German blow fell on Dec. 16, the 12th Army Group was caught without a division in reserve. Remnants of four German armies participated in the Battle of the Bulge, but while many units were overrun, Bastogne held and the Germans were too weak to exploit their initial success. General Eisenhower found it advisable to assign to the command of Field Marshal Montgomery such United States troops as were pushed north of the bulge. The troops were returned to General Bradley's command when the emergency was over. 

The check administered to the 12th Army Group in the Battle of the Bulge led to pressure from the British to return Field Marshall Montgomery to his former position as commander of the ground forces. General Bradley told General Eisenhower flatly that he would not serve under Field Marshall Montgomery and that ''you must send me home, for if Montgomery goes in over me, I will have lost the confidence of my command.'' It was Winston Churchill who poured oil on the troubled waters. Crossed at Remagen 

General Bradley's men crossed the Rhine at Remagen on March 7, were across in strength by March 22 and sped on toward the heart of Germany. A total of 325,000 German prisoners were captured in an encircling movement south of Essen and Dortmund. United States troops joined with the Soviet forces at Torgau on April 25, and General Bradley paid a courtesy visit to the Russian commander, Marshal Konev, who entertained the American commander with a troupe of female ballet dancers whom he identified as members of the Red Army. Later General Bradley invited Marshal Konev to his headquarters, where Jascha Heifetz entertained them with violin solos. 

After Germany's capitulation, General Bradley returned to Washington and took over as head of the Veterans Administration from 1945 to 1947. He then became Chief of Staff of the Army and served two terms as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, departing in 1954. He was made a five-star general in 1950. 

Besides General Eisenhower, three other men in the history of the United States have attained the title of General of the Army: Henry H. Arnold, Douglas MacArthur and George C. Marshall. John J. 

Pershing was awarded five stars and the title ''General of the Armies'' by an act of Congress in 1919. The only other man to have held that rank was George Washington. 

After stepping down - General Bradely did not retire because Generals of the Army are considered as always available for recall to active duty - he joined the Bulova Research and Development Laboratories. He was later named board chairman of its parent company, the Bulova Watch Company. He was also on the board of the Food Fair Stores and of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. 

General Bradley celebrated his last birthday on Feb. 12 at Fort Bliss in El Paso, where he and his wife had been living since 1977. The general was recovering from a viral infection in February and had earlier been confined to a wheelchair because of knee problems going back to his days on the West Point football team. 

He married Mary Elizabeth Quayle in 1916, a year after his graduation from West Point. They had a daughter, Elizabeth. Mrs. Bradley died in 1965, and the next year he married Esther Buhler, known as Kitty, who survives. 

Illustrations: Photo of Gen Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery Photo of Gen. Bradley

Omar Nelson Bradley United States general

Omar Nelson Bradley, (born Feb. 12, 1893, Clark, Mo., U.S.—died April 8, 1981, New York, N.Y.), U.S. Army officer who commanded the Twelfth Army Group, which helped ensure the Allied victory over Germany during World War II; later he served as first chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (1949–53).
Bradley graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1915. At the opening of World War II, he was commandant of the U.S. Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia, and he later commanded the 82nd and 28th infantry divisions. After being placed at the head of the II Corps for the North African campaign, under General George S. Patton, he captured Bizerte, Tunisia, in May 1943. This victory contributed directly to the fall of Tunisia and the surrender of more than 250,000 Axis troops. Bradley then led his forces in the Sicilian invasion, which was successfully concluded in August.
Later in 1943 Bradley was transferred to Great Britain, where he was given command of the U.S. First Army in 1944. Placed under the command of British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, he took part in planning the invasion of France. In June 1944 he joined his troops in the assault on the Normandy beaches and in the initial battles inland (see Normandy Invasion). At the beginning of August, he was elevated to command of the U.S. Twelfth Army Group. Under his leadership the First, Third, Ninth, and Fifteenth armies, the largest force ever placed under an American group commander, successfully carried on operations in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Czechoslovakia until the end of European hostilities.
After the German surrender, Bradley returned to the United States to serve as administrator of veterans’ affairs (1945–47) and chief of staff of the army (1948–49). He was well liked by both officers and enlisted men, and, after the unification of the armed forces, he was chosen in 1949 to be the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. While at that post he was promoted (1950) to general of the army.
After retiring from the army in 1953, Bradley was active in private enterprise. In 1951 he published his reminiscences, A Soldier’s Story. A General’s Life (with Clay Blair) was published in 1983.