Bradley had been saving his money to enter the University of Missouri in Columbia, where he intended to study law.

He was an outstanding student and athlete who was chosen captain of both the baseball and track teams.īradley was working as a 17-cents-an-hour boilermaker at the Wabash Railroad when he was encouraged by his Sunday school teacher at Central Christian Church in Moberly to take the entrance examination for the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, New York. Bradley graduated from Moberly High School in 1910. His mother moved with him to Moberly, where she remarried. The youth credited his father with passing on to him his love of books, baseball and shooting. They never owned a wagon, horse, or a mule. The elder Bradley never earned more than $40 a month in his lifetime, while he taught school and sharecropped, the latter with the aid of all the family. He attended at least eight country schools where his father taught. He was of British ancestry, his ancestors having emigrated from Great Britain to Kentucky in the mid-1700s. Gray, a local newspaper editor admired by his father, and a local physician, Dr. Omar Nelson Bradley, the son of schoolteacher John Smith Bradley (1868–1908) and his wife Mary Elizabeth (née Hubbard) (1875–1931), was born into poverty in rural Randolph County, Missouri, near Moberly. He continued to serve in public and business roles until his death in 1981 at age 88. Bradley left active duty in 1953 (although remaining on 'active retirement' for the next 27 years). He was instrumental in persuading Truman to dismiss General Douglas MacArthur in 1951 after MacArthur resisted administration attempts to scale back the war's strategic objectives. He was the senior military commander at the start of the Korean War, and supported President Harry S. In 1950, Bradley was promoted to the rank of General of the Army, becoming the last of the nine individuals promoted to five-star rank in the United States Armed Forces. He was appointed as Chief of Staff of the United States Army in 1948 and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1949. After the breakout from Normandy, he took command of the Twelfth United States Army Group, which ultimately comprised forty-three divisions and 1.3 million men, the largest body of American soldiers ever to serve under a single field commander.Īfter the war, Bradley headed the Veterans Administration. He commanded the First United States Army during the Invasion of Normandy. After Patton was reassigned, Bradley commanded II Corps in the Tunisia Campaign and the Allied invasion of Sicily. He received his first front-line command in Operation Torch, serving under General George S. entrance into World War II, Bradley oversaw the transformation of the 82nd Infantry Division into the first American airborne division. In 1941, Bradley became commander of the United States Army Infantry School.Īfter the U.S. After the war, Bradley taught at West Point and served in other roles before taking a position at the War Department under General George Marshall. Eisenhower as part of ' the class the stars fell on.' During World War I, Bradley guarded copper mines in Montana.

He graduated from the academy in 1915 alongside Dwight D. military's policy-making in the Korean War.īorn in Randolph County, Missouri, Bradley worked as a boilermaker before entering the United States Military Academy at West Point. Bradley was the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and oversaw the U.S. Omar Nelson Bradley (February 12, 1893 – April 8, 1981) was a senior officer of the United States Army during and after World War II, rising to the rank of General of the Army.

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