A General’s Life (an autobiography by Bradley, Omar Nelson)

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A general's life : an autobiography Blair, Clay, 1925-1998 Bradley, Omar Nelson, 1893-1981; Blair, Clay, 1925-1998 1983

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AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY BRADLEY OMAR NELSON AND CLAY BLAIR

In the final years of his long life, fivestar General of the Army Omar Bradley began the ambitious task of writing his autobiography. He chose to write with Clay Blair, an expert on World War II, and granted Mr. Blair numerous inter-

views and full access to all his personal papers. The result of this collaboration is an extraordinary autobiography, vivid and compelling, a sweeping and vital slice of American history. Omar Bradley grew up in near-poverty in rural Missouri. He won an appointment to West Point when the prime candidate failed the rigorous entrance examinations. A good student and outstanding athlete, Bradley missed action in France in World War I and believed his career to be ruined as a result. Nevertheless, he steadily advanced in a peace-time army reduced to barely 100,000 men until he caught the eye of General George C. Marshall, who sent Bradley to serve with Gene-

ral Dwight Eisenhower in North Africa early in World War II. Bradley proved himself a skilled battlefield general there and in Sicily, and he was chosen to lead American troops in the D-Day invasion of France. He eventually commanded four field armies (1.3 million men) in Europe, the largest American fighting force in history. His victorious campaign in Europe has earned General Bradley an esteemed place in American history. What distinguishes this autobiography is not only the enthralling narrative of these events but General Bradley's total candor in evaluating his wartime colleagues. Bradley rates Eisenhower as an able diplomat but a poor battle-

field manager; he assesses George Patton as a leader with so many grave personal faults that Patton was only reluctantly chosen to participate in the invasion of France; and Bradley depicts Montgomery as an overrated general whose style of warfare was already outmoded and whose megalomania made him nearly impossible to work with. General Bradley's post-World War II career is less well known but no less important. As head of the Veterans Administration, he managed the enormous task of coping with 15 million new veterans, completely transforming the VA in the process. He became Chief of Staff of the Army during the

acrimonious debate over unification of the armed forces and then became the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Chairman of the JCS, Bradley was a principal military adviser to President Truman during the Korean War, and he candidly discusses the flawed strategy of that war. As in the World War II section of his autobiography, General Bradley draws on formerly top-secret communications and recently declassified documents to provide authentic behind-the-scenes drama. He gives a frank description of General MacArthur's performance in Korea, commenting freely on the notorious Truman-MacArthur controversy

in which Bradley was intimately involved. A brief afterword takes General Bradley's story from his retirement from full-time service in 1953 to his death at the age of 88 in 1981.

Arnold Newman

To Kitty, my beloved wife, who saved my life and filled every day of it with joy. —Omar N. Bradley

Contents 1.Collaborator's Foreword Part One * Early Years Part Two * Overseas to War Part Three * The War on the Continent Part Four * Washington Part Five * The Korean War Collaborator's Afterword Sources and Acknowledgments Notes

Collaborator’s Foreword In his twilight years, General of the Army Omar N. Bradley decided he wanted to write his autobiography. There was much he wanted to say about his family, his youth and the preWorld War II years. He was not altogether satisfied with his excellent World War II war memoir “A Soldier's Story”, which was ghosted by his aide, Chester B. Hansen, and published in 1951. This memoir was written long before the official World War II documents were declassified or the official and private papers of Eisenhower, Patton and others had been made available. Moreover, when the book was published,

Bradley was still on active duty—as Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff—and while it was not officially "cleared", his prominent public position imposed considerable restraints on what he could write. Finally, there was much Bradley wanted to say about his postwar experiences in Washington as a leading figure in the Truman administration during the Cold War and the hot war in Korea and as one who had counseled Truman to fire MacArthur. In 1971, when he was seventy-eight years old, Bradley commenced writing the autobiography which he called As I Remember. He had never had a way with words; he had a real struggle with

English at West Point. Throughout his life almost all his speeches had been written by his aides or others. His personal letters were pedestrian. Thus he found the autobiography tough going. When he reached the World War II section, selectivity and organization defeated him: the work began to sprawl inchoately. After a brief stab at the post-World War II years, he gave up and set the project aside. General Bradley’s second wife, Kitty Buhler Bradley, was screenwriter with a strong sense of history. Before their marriage, she had interviewed Bradley to gather background for a proposed movie, Breakout. After their marriage, she began collecting his disorganized

papers and memorabilia and deposited them at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, where the Omar N. Bradley Foundation and Omar N. Bradley Museum are situated, and at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where the Omar N. Bradley Library is located. The Institute also arranged to elicit General Bradley's recollections and reflections on his distinguished career. These were recorded in a massive taped and transcribed Oral History, which Lieutenant Colonel Charles K. Hanson of the Institute conducted in 1974-5. All the while, Kitty Bradley encouraged her husband to continue with the autobiography. When she

finally realized this was not possible, she began looking for a professional writer with a military history background to serve as collaborator. I joined the enterprise in the fall of 1979, when Bradley was eighty-six years old. He was not a total stranger. I had met him—and reported on his doings—in 1950-53, when I was a Pentagon correspondent for Time and Life magazines. As collaborator, I began from scratch. Utilizing what Bradley had already written, the Hanson oral history, his personal papers and hundreds of other documents, books and other transcribed interviews (more fully described in the back of this book under "Sources and

acknowledgments"), I taped some forty-eight hours of interviews with General Bradley over the period February 1 to February 13, 1980. Mrs. Bradley fully participated in these interviews and was very helpful at prodding out long-forgotten episodes. She was named "research editor and coordinator'' of all Bradley documents, letters and biographical material for this project. Paralleling these interviews, my wife Joan and I started researching Bradley's life as though we were writing a biography. We visited the scenes of his childhood and dug through records in Missouri court-houses, archives, cemeteries and family Bibles. With

the assistance of Missouri state officials, genealogists and archivists, we were able to construct a heretofore nonexistent Bradley family tree. We interviewed school classmates and friends and searched through hundreds of back issues of local newspapers. Subsequently, we reconstructed his official Army and personal life with the help of Bradley's papers and diaries, official government papers, published memoirs and interviews with his daughter, Elizabeth Dorsey, and scores of contemporaries. In tracking down all these people—and some obscure documents and books—we were invaluably assisted by Mrs. Bradley and by Bradley's aides Allan G. Little, Court-

ney M. Rittgers, Thomas A. Hansen and Ricardo P. Mosqueda, with whom we remained in almost daily touch by telephone or mail. I began writing in June of 1980. By fall I had completed the pre-World War II section. Bradley read it and was delighted. "He knows more about me than I do" was his comment to Mrs. Bradley. I then began the World War II section, an immense job inasmuch as I had made the decision to survey all extant important scholarship, including the recent official disclosures on Ultra—the valuable output from breaking the German military codes. In the war section, I was greatly assisted by the monumental daily diary of

Bradley's aide Chester Hansen, which was only selectively used in A Soldier's Story, and by the recently published nine volumes of Eisenhower papers, two volumes of Patton papers, numerous memoirs and interviews and, not least, by the magnificent official American and British histories of the European war. Bradley died in April 1981, before I completed the World War II section. This development naturally posed no small dilemma. Could one proceed with and publish an "autobiography," part of which Bradley had never seen? Should I not now shift gears and turn it into a biography? After prolonged consideration, I decided to proceed in the

autobiographical mode. By that time my own mind was so deeply immersed in Bradley's that I thought like Bradley. I had at hand literally thousands of pages of Bradley's transcribed words. By confining myself to these words or to official documents or correspondence, and introducing no views or opinions that I knew Bradley did not positively hold. I could reconstruct the war virtually in his own words. So I proceeded with painstaking care, double- or triple-checking other sources for every word I wrote. I feel certain that had Bradley lived to read the result he would not have made any substantial alterations or changes in emphasis.

A similar technique was utilized for the postwar period, when Bradley served as chief of the Veterans Administration, then as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and finally as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Here I was invaluably assisted by the prodigious work of the historical division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which has recently produced in manuscript form some 2,600 pages of JCS history, covering the years 1945-52, and by Bradley's postwar speeches, magazine articles, interviews and testimony before congressional committees, which have been collected, photocopied and bound. In addition, I also had available Bradley's official papers and corres-

pondence from the National Archives, plus memoirs and numerous secondary works. Bradley's recollections of the postwar period were less distinct than his memories of his youth and World War II. Nonetheless I have conscientiously endeavored not to impute a view or opinion to him that I could not verify from at least two sources. Owing to the unusual way in which this book was ultimately carried to completion, I asked a number of distinguished American military historians to read it before publication. The entire book was carefully scrutinized for factual accuracy by the Army's Chief of Military History, Brigadier General James L. Collins Jr. and his staff of his-

torians. In addition, the World War II historians Charles MacDonald, Martin Blumenson and Forrest Pogue closely read the World War II sections, as did Chester Hansen. JCS historians Robert J. Watson, James Schnabel, Kenneth W. Condit and Walter S. Poole read the Cold War and Korean War sections, as did Dr. Pogue, who has recently covered the same ground in the forthcoming fourth volume of his George C. Marshall biography. The final result, then, is the story of Bradley's life from birth to 1953, when he stepped down from official government service. In a sense the book is probably best described as half Bradley, half Blair. To Bradley's recollecti-

ons, earlier and later, I have provided solid historical underpinning, as a competent collaborator should. While all of it did not get Bradley's official approval, I am confident that it faithfully carries out his original design. Clay Blair, Washington Island, Wisconsin, September 1982 Throughout the war he was not only an outstanding commander, but he was my warm friend and close adviser. I think I may claim some right to at least a casual recognition in the field of strategy, organization, and in developing Allied team-work. Bradley was the master tactician of our forces and in my opini-

on will eventually come to be recognized as America's foremost battle leader. —Dwight D. Eisenhower

PART ONE *****

EARLY YEARS ONE Let me begin my story with a few words about my family. They were all plain Missouri farmers, proud, honest,

hardworking and poor. Desperately poor. According to family legend, my Bradley ancestors immigrated from the British Isles sometime in the mid1700s to Madison County, Kentucky. In the early 1800s they migrated west to what would become the State of Missouri. They settled on small, hard farm parcels in Randolph County in the central part of the state near Clark, a farm village, and Higbee, a coal-mining town. My grandfather, Thomas Minter Bradley, still in his teens, served as a private in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. When he came home, he married Sarah Elizabeth

Lewis, the daughter of a poor Clark farmer. They had nine children. My father, John Smith Bradley, born February 15, 1867, was the eldest. 1 Like all the Missouri Bradleys, my father began life as a sodbuster. But he became the first Bradley to break out of the mold. At age nineteen, and until then largely self-educated, he entered one of the rural schools near Clark. He was a quick study. Two years later he had advanced far enough to qualify as a teacher in the rural school system and about 1888 he launched his life's work. 2 My father was a curious blend of frontiersman, sportsman, farmer and intellectual. Powerfully built and fear-

less, he was a superb hunter and shot —indisputably the best in Randolph County. A pioneer in baseball, he carved his own bats, taught himself to pitch curve balls and organized and starred on local teams. In the months when school was not in session, he usually hired out to farmers or sharecropped to earn enough money to survive. At the same time, he was an omnivorous reader and lover of books. Everywhere he taught, he encouraged his students to read and created small libraries for them. Owing to his strength and fearlessness, my father was one of the few rural teachers able to discipline the older, sometimes unruly farm boys.

When a difficult situation arose, he was sought after. As a consequence, he taught at nearly a dozen different rural schools, none more than fifteen or twenty miles from Higbee, and all within the same school district. His peak salary was about forty dollars a month. In his fourth year as a teacher, age twenty-five, my father fell in love with one of his pupils at the Fairview School, Sarah Elizabeth (Bessie) Hubbard, one of five children of Henry Clay and Mary Elizabeth Spurling Hubbard. Henry Clay Hubbard had served briefly in the Union Army during the Civil War. He and his wife were then farming a poor forty-acre tract about

three miles west of Clark and lived in a crude three-room loghouse. Bessie, born April 18, 1875, was then only sixteen. 3 My father and Bessie Hubbard were married on May 12, 1892, at the Hubbard home. Nine months later, to the day, February 12, 1893—Lincoln's birthday—I was born, without complications, in that same house. My mother, Bessie, was still only seventeen. They named me Omar Nelson Bradley —Omar from Omar D. Gray, a local newspaper editor my father admired; Nelson from the name of a local doctor. 4

When I was about three and a half years old, my mother's older, married

sister, Emma Jane Bogie, died of tuberculosis, leaving two daughters, Nettie, seven, and Opal, six. A few months later, my grandmother Hubbard also died. Since there were no other Hubbard women to care for little Nettie and Opal, my parents took them into our home. Thus my two first cousins became instant "older sisters," who remained with us, off and on, many, many years. Our family grew further in February 1900, when mother had another son, Raymond Calvert. But, to our great sorrow, Raymond died of scarlet fever on January 18, 1902, a few days before his second birthday. My parents had no more children. 5

As my father moved from school to school, I grew to boyhood living in a variety of primitive wood frame houses in the countryside outside Higbee. In the fall of 1899, age six, I commenced my schooling at Pemberton, ten miles southwest of Higbee. The next year we moved again and I attended the Locust Grove School in nearby Howard County. In 1903, I entered the Baldridge School, ten miles south of Higbee in Harrisburg. Each of these schools consisted of one room and my father was the sole teacher. 6 We could not afford a horse and buggy, so my father and I walked to and from school each day carrying our lunch baskets, down dirt roads that

were either dusty, muddy or icy, depending on the weather. Father set a hearty pace—seventeen minutes to the mile. This was quite a daily hike for a young lad, especially on bitter cold days, but having those hours alone each day with my father was spiritually reinforcing to a very great degree. In school we sat in the one large room, more or less grouped by age and grade. My father moved from group to group, assigning lessons, teaching. He was, without doubt, a brilliant man. I idolized him. He taught us youngsters individual words—sight reading—before we learned the alphabet. I learned to read very quickly. Perhaps it was because my father was the teacher.

When your father is the teacher, there's added incentive to do your homework! He was a strict disciplinarian and stricter on me than the others. Even when I climbed in bed with him to get warm at night, he would give me math problems to work out in my head. 7 He succeeded very quickly in inculcating in me a love for books. After I could read fairly well, I devoured books such as Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, Kipling's Jungle Books, and the like. I was particularly fascinated by history—tales of the French and Indian Wars, the Revolutionary and Civil wars. I would act out many of these battles on the living-room rug, using

dominoes to build forts and empty 22 cartridges to represent lines of soldiers. I made "heavy artillery" from hollow elderberry reeds or brass tubing and would bombard the domino forts with navy beans. In my mock wars, the Americans always won. 8 Almost all the meat mother put on the table was game that father bagged with his 12-gauge L. C. Smith doublebarrel shotgun: rabbit, squirrel, quail, coon, duck, deer. When I was about six, he gave me a pump-action BB rifle and took me hunting with him. Of course I could not kill game with BB's, but it was excellent training. He taught me to walk quietly behind him, taking care not to step on sticks or rustle leaves,

and to focus my vision close in and ahead. I learned a great deal by simply watching my father in action. And, of course, he taught me all the safety precautions in using a weapon. Occasionally I would go off on my own, down near a lake, and kill frogs with my BB rifle. I was proud to contribute these frogs to our table. When my father judged me qualified for a real weapon and gave me a single-shot Stevens .22 rifle, I felt I had achieved manhood. I shall never forget the humiliation I experienced the first time we went squirrel hunting. I saw a squirrel in the top of a tree and signaled to my father. He went to the opposite side of the tree, forcing the squirrel to my side. As care-

full as I knew how, I shot three times. The squirrel never moved. My father came over and examined my rifle. Both the front and rear sights were out of line. He adjusted them and said, "If I don't knock his eye out, something is very wrong with the sights." He aimed and got out one shot. The squirrel fell to the ground—dead. When I picked it up, I saw that father had shot him in the right eye. That was the last time I ever fired a rifle with the sights out of line. 9 I worked hard to live down that humiliation. In those days a box of fifty .22 short shells cost only fifteen cents. I killed and dressed rabbits and sold them for five cents apiece. Almost all

the money I made went for more shells. In time, and with practice, I became as good a shot as my father. One time, one of my cousins came over to play. I got him to throw an egg high into the air for a target. He threw it straight up and cupped his hands to catch it, not believing for a second that I could hit it and not wanting to waste the egg. I cut the egg straight in half and my cousin got an omelet on his head. 10 My mother, blue-eyed, strongminded and entirely gray-haired before she was twenty, was an unfailingly cheerful and resourceful woman. She was a strict, attentive, though far from doting, mother and a superb cook. She

would usually stew the squirrels and fry the rabbits, after dressing the hind legs and back saddle. Like everyone else, we had a large vegetable garden. She did the canning in the fall and, of course, the baking all year long. She was an excellent seamstress. Father gave her a foot-operated Singer sewing machine which she used with growing skill for years, making all of her own clothes. 11 Neither of my parents was strongly opinionated or emotionally demonstrative. Politically, my father was, like many in the Midwest in those days, a Populist in the tradition of the "Boy Orator," William Jennings Bryan. He sided with the farmers, particularly the

poor farmers, against the railroads and big trust interests, whom he believed were exploiting the little man. He approved of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the Interstate Commerce Act and other measures of the day designed to curb the "robber barons." But he was no soap-box orator, no political activist. When he spoke his views, it was in a quiet, reasoned tone, usually at the supper table in the privacy of our home. Nor were my parents demonstratively religious. Father was raised in the Church of Christ, baptized by immersion at about age fifteen 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. But in our home, there was no grace at mealtime, no Bible reading or other religious overtones. However, both my parents were clearly devout and their faith was strong. They lived a Christian life in every sense of the phrase, and by their example imparted a strong faith to me. 12

In 1905, when I was twelve, we moved into Higbee itself, primarily so that I could attend its excellent public school. This was a hardship on my father, forcing him to walk as much as seven miles each way every day in order to continue teaching in the out-

lying rural schools where he was needed. My parents bought a small house at a sheriff's auction for $515—$65 down with a $450 mortgage. To help carry the payments, my mother and I and Nettie and Opal took turns operating the switchboard for a rural telephone line of about ninety telephones. The switchboard was located in one of our bedrooms, and we alternated standing "watch" at night. 13 After reviewing my school records and giving me rudimentary tests, the Higbee School principal skipped me ahead a year and placed me in the eighth grade. This was a new experience for me. I had never before been in a school where all my classmates were

in the same grade; and, of course, at twelve, I was the youngest in the class of twenty-two boys and girls. Even so, I did well. My average grade for all courses for that eight-month school year was 94 and ranked me at the top of my class. 14 During this time I did not see much of my father except on weekends. The following year, when I was thirteen, he bought a new pump-action shotgun and gave me his old double-barrel 12gauge L. C. Smith, which had a powerful kick. Father and I found good quail hunting at a place about five or six miles outside Higbee. By this time, I was fairly skilled with a gun. I'm proud to say I killed the first quail I shot at. 15

I also became quite proficient with a slingshot. I made lead pellets for it in a bullet mold, so my pellets were always uniform in size and weight, an important factor in achieving maximum accuracy. I killed rabbits, squirrels and sparrows—sparrows because they would nest in our gutters and stop them up. Once a friend challenged my accuracy. We stuck a penny in the ground. I moved back to a range of twenty feet. I hit the penny with my second shot. In spite of our two incomes, we were poor—very poor. Father would, of necessity, conceive all sorts of schemes to make extra money and often I helped in these projects. We laid a trap line,

but it yielded only one mink for which we got $1.25. We gathered honey from hollow trees, even collecting about 240 pounds on one memorable occasion. But gathering honey, I found, was a hazardous undertaking. One of our most profitable schemes was digging for roots of golden seal, commonly known as yellowroot, which in those days was used in making medicine. Father knew of a place near Burton where we could find yellowroot. We'd take the train down in the morning, gather roots, then walk the twelve miles back to Higbee. Then we'd dry the roots and sell them by the pound for a pretty fair price. 16

In Higbee during the summers, following in my father's footsteps, I played baseball with a passion. We boys would gather at the baseball diamond about nine in the morning. We played until lunch, then, after lunch, walked about a mile out in the country for a swim in a lake, then back to the baseball diamond until suppertime. When I wasn't out on the diamond, I played catch, often with my cousin Fred Bradley. He recently recalled: “We'd go down to the railroad track. The rails were thirty feet long, so you could measure very accurately how far you were throwing. Both of us got to where we could throw the ball ten rails. That's three hundred feet, or

a hundred yards, the length of a football field.” 17 In my second year at Higbee School, there were only twelve of us what was called the "sophomore class." As a consequence, the teacher was able to give us very close attention. My final average grade of 98.66 again led the class. I must have been a very well behaved young man. In both semesters that year I received a perfect grade in deportment. 18 The winter of 1907-1908 was an especially harsh one in Higbee. It was hard on my father, who was teaching at Ebenezer School, a six-mile roundtrip walk each day. In January he came home one day very ill. His illness was

soon diagnosed as pneumonia. After several days in bed, at 4:00 a.m. on the morning of January, two weeks shy of his forty-first birthday, he died in our home. It was an indescribably shattering blow for Mother, for me, for the relatives, for all his many friends and the community. His obituary in the Higbee Weekly News in part: No death in recent years has cast such a gloom over the community. That such a good man who, a week ago, was in the vigor of his manhood, should now be lying so low, is a fact that his friends and

acquaintances cannot yet realize... No better citizen ever lived among us. He was absolutely honest in all things with himself and with those with whom he came in contact and was for anything and everything that tended to elevate humanity. The world is better for his having lived in it, and although he is gone from among us, his life was such that it will have influence for good for years to come. As a tribute of respect to the memory of such a good citizen, we suggest that every business house be closed during the

funeral services and that all who are not prevented by sick-ness attend. It is his due. 19 At the time of father's death, I, too, was sick in bed with a cold. Mother thought it better that I not leave my bed. I did not see my father in death. I was still sick on the day of the funeral service at the Christian Church and the burial at Log Chapel Cemetery, where Raymond was buried. The Higbee Weekly News described some of the events of that sad day: The large crowd that faced the bitter cold wind to attend the funeral of John S. Bradley at the Christian Church last Saturday morning was a fitting tribute to

his memory. Notwithstanding the fact that it was the coldest and most disag-reeable day of the winter, and that the hour for the services had been changed without notice, late arrivals could scar-cely find seats. The discourse, preached by W. W. Boatman, while brief, was forceful and practical. At the request of the family, the casket was opened, that John's friends might look upon his face the last time. No matter how hard they had tried to suppress their emotions, the strongest among the large crowd turned from the casket with tears in their eyes.

To die universally regretted is a privile-ge accorded but few. 20 My beloved father was gone; I was but a few days short of fifteen. He left no estate, of course, only the heavily mortgaged house, which my mother and I were in no position to carry. But he left me with a priceless legacy. Thanks to father, I was determined, no matter how poor we might be, to continue my education all the way through college; to make something of myself; not to squander my time or intellectual gifts; to work hard. He had given me much else as well. A love of and appreciation of the out-of-doors, hunting and sports. A sense of justice and respect for my fellowman and his proper-

ty, especially the less fortunate. Integrity. Sobriety. Patriotism. Religiosity. No son could have asked more of his father, nor been more grateful for his example. 21

Two In the months following my father's death, Mother decided to move from Higbee to Moberly, a big new city about fifteen miles north, home of the Wabash Railroad workshops and the Brown Shoe Company. To support us she would become a professional seamstress and take in boarders. She rented our Higbee house to cover the mortgage payments, and we loaded

our few possessions in a horse-drawn moving wagon and set off on a new life. 1 Mother rented a house on South Fourth Street in Moberly, found two paying boarders and launched her new career. I got a part-time job delivering the Moberly Democrat and that fall entered the new and magnificent red brick Moberly High School. To my dismay, the school authorities decided to put me "back" one year to the class of 1911. Since it was a four-year school, that made me a lowly sophomore once more, facing three long years of studies before I could graduate. 2 By now I was even more keenly interested in sports. Moberly High School

had no formal athletic teams, but there were informally organized track and baseball teams. I signed up for both, but my primary interest was baseball. By that time I was a baseball nut. We players provided our own equipment and arranged games with other schools. As I recall, we had a pretty fair season. I played in the field and, owing to many long hours of practice, could catch well and throw the ball long and hard. The editor of the 1909 yearbook wrote of me: "A good ball player, if he doesn't look like one." 3 Although mother was not a devout woman, she was a regular Sunday churchgoer, as was I. We joined the Central Christian Church, an impressi-

ve new stone structure with a soaring steeple and a large congregation. On February 14, 1909, two days after my sixteenth birthday, I was baptized by immersion in a tank in the church basement. 4 I seldom missed Sunday School. My teacher—Eudora (Dora) Quayle, a widow with two teenage daughters, Mary Elizabeth, born July 25, 1892, and Sarah Jane, two years younger— lived across the street from us. Dora's husband, Charles Quayle, who had been the highly esteemed elected marshal of Moberly (equivalent of police chief), had died of tuberculosis in 1902, age thirty-five, leaving a modest estate, including two small houses.

Dora and the two girls lived in one house and rented the other to make ends meet. I was attracted to Mary Quayle, but she was six months older than I and, owing to my having been "put back," a year ahead of me in school. When I first met her she had a beau, an older boy who had already graduated from high school. I was shy around girls, a stranger in town, busy with my paper route, sports and chores and did not date the whole time I was in high school. However, as they were neighbors and members of the same church, I came to know all the Quayle women quite well. 5 In the fall of 1909 I re-entered the Moberly High School for my junior

year. It was then realized that I had been wrongly put back a year. At midterm I was jumped ahead a full year into the senior class of 1910, to graduate the following June. This was Mary Quayle's class, a closely knit clannish group that had been together since grammar school days. Except for Mary and the boys on the baseball team, I did not get to know any of them well. I remained the "loner" or "outsider" from Higbee who, bafflingly, kept jumping back and forth in grade. 6 In the winter, when the lake in Forest Park was frozen hard, ice skating was extremely popular. I had been skating for years and did it well. But that winter I suffered an absolutely

catastrophic accident on the ice, a bone-shattering collision with another boy one dark night. His head smashed into my teeth, knocking almost every one of them loose and severely damaging my gums. Had we the money, I would have gone to a dentist for braces or whatever might be required. But we had no money for such luxuries and, to my eternal regret, I did nothing. For years thereafter, my teeth and gums were a source of trouble and occasionally caused great pain. I never smiled when my picture was taken, but rather closed my lips tightly to avoid there being any permanent record of that jumbled mess. Eventually I would

have all my teeth pulled at a very early age. 7 We graduated in May 1910. My grades during my two years at Moberly High School were good but not the highest. Generally, I did better in science (96) and math (94) than in English (90) or history (85). My overall average grade was 91.4. In our yearbook, each of us seniors was described with a single adjective, designed to sum up our personalities or attributes. Mary Quayle, who stood third in the class, was described as "linguistic" because she was good at languages. I was labeled "calculative," I hope, because I was good at math. By a curious coincidence, Mary's senior picture and mine

were randomly paired at the bottom of the same page. 8 By graduation, I had decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. But I did not have enough money to put away to go to college, and I was concerned about how Mother might fare without my help. The plan I arrived at was to return to a job I had had the previous summer at the Wabash Railroad, work a full year and try to save several hundred dollars, enough to keep me going at the University of Missouri in Columbia until I could find a job there. Accordingly, in the summer of 1910, I went back to work for the Wabash, first in my old job in the supply department, later in the boiler shop, where I made a

better salary helping to repair the steam engines. I worked nine hours a day, six days a week, and was paid seventeen cents an hour, or about forty dollars a month. 9 Mary Quayle's favorite aunt, Papita, was a teacher at the State Normal School, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Mary decided that she would join her in St. Cloud and do her first two years of college there, and later, finances permitting, go on to the University of Missouri. This was arranged, and in the fall of 1910 Mary moved to St. Cloud. I did not see much of her for the next several years. 10 That summer and fall, my mother, who was then thirty-five, began to take

interest in a man, John Robert (Bob) Maddox. He was a poor farmer, very hard of hearing. His wife, Mary, had recently died, leaving him to raise his two young sons, David Russell, age seven and Charles William, age two. My mother apparently felt no qualms over the prospect of raising two more boys not her own. On Christmas Day 1910 they were married, and I now had a stepfather and two little stepbrothers. All three Maddoxes moved into our house; the boarders moved out. A month later, Mother let our house in Higbee go by default. It was sold at sheriff's auction for $441.20, sufficient to satisfy the mortgage, removing that burden from her shoulders. 11

Mother's decision to marry Bob Maddox relieved me of any misgivings about going away to college and leaving her to cope alone. My goal now was to enter the University of Missouri in the fall of 1911. But a talk one day with my Sunday School superintendent, John Cruson, drastically changed my plans. He said: "Why don't you try for West Point?" 12 I knew a little about West Point from my study of history. I replied, rather naively, “I couldn't afford West Point.” He put me straight. He told me that not only was West Point free, but that the cadets were paid a small monthly salary while there. He went on to explain how one got an appointment to

West Point through one's congressman, competing against other candidates. I discussed the idea with my mother. She was not too enthusiastic. West Point, New York, was a long, long way from Moberly, Missouri. But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that West Point was made to order for my financial circumstances. I wrote a carefully composed letter in longhand to our congressman, William M. Rucker, who lived about thirty miles away in Keytesville. Not long afterwards I received a reply from the congressman. He was sorry to report that he had no vacancies to fill at that time. Under existing

law, each congressman and senator could only provide one cadet for West Point every four years. Rucker's current appointment was in his third year, with one more year to go. This meant that I would have to wait a full year before I could apply. That seemed too long a time. I would settle for the University of Missouri as originally planned. As it happened, that very spring Congress amended the law concerning appointment of cadets to West Point. Congressmen and senators could now appoint a new cadet every three years. That meant Rucker would now have a late-starting opening for 1911. On June 27, I received a letter from Rucker ex-

plaining the change and informing me that his principal candidate was a Keytesville boy, Dempsey Anderson, and that if I so desired, I could be an alternate candidate. This meant that if Dempsey Anderson failed his mental or physical examinations and I passed both, I would become the appointee. The examinations would be held at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis on July 5, only eight days from then. I mulled this letter over for quite some time. I had previously received some West Point literature and knew the subjects in which I would be examined. They included geography, geometry, algebra, and one of my weaker areas, English. I had been out of school

a full year and I was a bit rusty. I had not looked at an algebra book since Higbee High School, three years back. It seemed imprudent to quit work to cram for the exams: I could only study at night, after a long hard day's work in the boiler shop, and then for only six days. Dempsey Anderson had probably been preparing himself for a long time. It seemed foolish to spend hard-earned, much-needed money on a roundtrip ticket to St. Louis with the odds stacked so heavily against me. Assailed by these doubts, I sought advice and counsel from the superintendent of Moberly schools, J. C. Lilly, who had been a friend of Father's. He weighed the difficulties and the odds

and, after his usual careful deliberation, he advised me to go ahead and try for it. Even if it came to naught, he said, the experience would be worthwhile. I had to agree, but with one reservation. I still thought it imprudent to gamble the cash outlay involved. If the Wabash would give me time off and a free pass to St. Louis, I would go for it. The Wabash generously gave me time off and the free pass. On July 4 I boarded a train for St. Louis with a small suitcase and an armload of books. This was my first trip to the big glittering metropolis of St. Louis, but I had little time for sightseeing. I crammed all the way on the train and on the streetcar to Jefferson Barracks.

About a dozen West Point candidates, both principals and alternates, reported to Jefferson Barracks from various congressional districts, including my direct competition, Dempsey Anderson. He was the son of Orville Bradley Anderson (no kin), a former sheriff of Keytesville, who had been a close friend of Congressman Rucker's. Anderson was a year older than I, and I was appalled to learn he had been prepping for the exams a full year. 13 The exams stretched over four days, four hours for each of the subjects. I had a terrible time with the algebra. At the end of two hours, I had solved no more than 20 percent of the necessary 67 percent of the problems required to

pass that subject. That was it, complete failure. There was no way I could finish or pass. Utterly discouraged, and not a little angry at myself for coming all the way to St. Louis, I gathered up my papers and walked up to the officer in charge to turn them in and go back to Moberly and go to work. I saw he was deeply engrossed in a book. Not wishing to disturb him, I returned to my desk thinking I might as well give it one more try. Then, almost magically, the theorems started to come to me. I fell to work eagerly. At the end of the four hours, I thought I had completed a bit more than the necessary 67 percent, but not by much. However, this experience encouraged me, and I hung

on through the rest of the exams, all of which I found very, very tough. I returned to Moberly and my job in the Wabash boiler shop without the slightest hope of going to West Point. On July 27, I was absolutely astonished when I received a telegram stating that I had been appointed to West Point and that I should report on August 1, before noon. I was so certain a mistake had been made, I telephoned Dempsey Anderson in Keytesville. But there had been no mistake. He had just received a telegram informing him he had failed. A day or so later, I received a letter of congratulations from Congressman Rucker officially informing me that

Dempsey Anderson had failed "some" of the examinations, that I had made the "required grade" in all of them, and that therefore I was the "successful contestant." He added: "I wish to congratulate you heartily upon the rather remarkable showing made by you in this test. In view of the limited notice given and the short time in which preparation could be made, your grades reflect great credit upon yourself as a student. I am especially gratified by this showing for it is an indication of the work that you are sure to do at the Academy and of the fact that you will take high rank there in that work." 14 I felt a twinge of guilt about Dempsey Anderson, as though I had taken away

something that was his. I offered to decline the appointment, thinking he might somehow regain it, but he said, "Indeed not. You have won." All this happened so quickly that I barely had time to pack and make my farewells. I put the bulk of my clothes in a steamer trunk and shipped them to West Point, keeping one change in a small suitcase. On the afternoon of July 30, I went to the Moberly railroad station alone and departed on the Wabash Railroad, carrying my suitcase and my entire fortune, one hundred dollars, in cash in my wallet. Twenty-four hours later, I debarked at Highland Falls, New York, a small town just outside the gate of West Point. I spent that

night in a hotel sleeping soundly, and on the following day, August 1, reported to the post headquarters before noon, as ordered. There was a sergeant on duty. I said, "Sir, Candidate Bradley reporting for duty." 15

Three The four years I spent at West Point were among the most rewarding of my life. I loved every minute of it. For a young boy who had lost his father and might have unconsciously been in search of a surrogate, it was the ideal place. West Point was a rigidly structu-

red, highly disciplined all-male society with no end of strong "father figures" to emulate. For a young boy who was a sports nut it was edenic. In those days, West Point was sports-oriented to a feverish degree. The most esteemed cadets in the society were star athletes. For a young boy who had a natural intellectual bent for math and science, West Point was academically tailormade. It was essentially a narrow-gauge engineering school, with a smattering of liberal arts and social sciences thrown in for seasoning. 1 The Corps of Cadets in 1911 was small—a mere 600 men. Our plebe class—1915—which numbered 265 at the outset, was the largest ever to

enter the Academy and comprised 44 percent of the corps. It had officially reported for duty on June 14, and had been in summer camp, living in tents on the northeast corner of what is still today known as the "Plain" for almost seven weeks. The fourteen of us who reported late owing to the change in the law were forever stigmatized as "Augustines" because we had been mercifully spared seven weeks of intense "crawling" (hazing) in "beast barracks." The school authorities apparently held our lateness against us, too. We Augustines were always "behind." None of us was promoted to cadet noncommissioned

officer or officer until our senior, or first class, year. We Augustines spent several days double-timing from one somber gray granite building to the next, getting indoctrinated to military life. We filled out endless forms, drew our uniforms, bedding and furniture, had our hair cut short and took a physical exam. My uniform bill came to $160. I turned in the hundred dollars in cash I had (cadets were not allowed to have cash) for uniforms, making arrangements to pay off the balance from my monthly salary of fifty dollars. My physical turned up no defects. The records show that I was tall and skinny: 5 feet and 11.25 inches, a mere 145 pounds. Like

my mother, I became prematurely gray and even then—age eighteen—I had some gray hairs. The roommate assigned me turned out to be a trial. He was Benjamin W. Mills, a lackadaisical Southerner, born in Georgia and raised in Florida. He was not too bright and seldom applied himself seriously to his studies. Against all rules, he smoked and continued to smoke throughout his four years at West Point. Had I not spent countless hours coaching him in math and science, Bennie Mills would not have made it through the first year. We soon joined the rest of our class on the Plain. Among these young men were fifty-nine who, because of World

War II, would become general officers. One of those, a smiling golden-haired Kansan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, would wear five stars and become President of the United States. Two would wear four stars: Joseph T. McNarney and James A. Van Fleet. Seven would wear three stars, among them Joseph M. Swing and George E. Stratemeyer. In time, we would be known as "The Class of the Stars Fellows." Summer camp was a purely military exercise. There, on the Plain, almost in the shadows of the granite buildings of West Point, and overlooking the Hudson River, officers of the department of tactics schooled us in rudimentary field problems. We lived in tents, hiked

with packs, stood guard duty, set up fields of fire and the like. We also got in some target practice on the range. My long years of hunting in Missouri stood me in good stead. I did well, scoring many bull's-eyes. In spite of the unrelenting hazing by the upperclassmen, I found summer camp fascinating and was genuinely sorry that I had come late. The hazing, so often criticized, had several positive by-products. It was a great leveler. There were among us many pampered boys, campus heroes and heartthrobs, prep school snobs and even a few bullies. Hazing knocked the wind out of their sails in a hurry. It impressed upon us the sense of rank

and privilege and taught us to unquestioningly and quickly obey orders, fundamental grounding for any soldier. At the same time, we were learning basics: how to make a bed and clean and care for our rooms and rifles, when to shave, when to shine our shoes, and always, always, always to say "sir" to our superiors. We learned, too, about the West Point honor code and the Academy’s stirring motto "Duty, Honor, Country." These were not hollow trappings. It was impressed upon us that in all official matters, truth was overriding, mandatory, absolute. We were to report any official violation, even if we

had to report ourselves. Lying or cheating would bring instant dismissal. That summer, and thereafter, we were encouraged to engage in a wide variety of intramural and varsity sports. These included wrestling, boxing, riding, fencing, swimming (all cadets had to pass a tough swimming), football, basketball and baseball. One afternoon some of us plebes turned out for organized baseball. I played left field, as usual, and was lucky enough to get some good long throws to home plate and to make a home run. Looking over the plebes was the West Point baseball coach, Sam Strang Nicklin, an ex-Giant and a legendary character who spent his week-

ends in New York on benders with his old baseball buddies. After the game, he approached me and complimented me on my performance, remarking that one of my throws to home plate was the longest he had ever seen. (No one measured the distance, of course; over the years legend exaggerated it beyond reason.) He noted on a card bearing my name and class: "Bats right, throws right, hits curve, fine arm.” He indicated that I might be able to help the West Point varsity baseball team the following spring. Nothing could have pleased me more. 2 The Corps of Cadets was organized, administratively, into a battalion of six

hundred-man companies, A through F. Cadets were assigned to companies according to their height, so that when the corps marched as a group the lines of our hats, rifles and greatcoats would not be jagged. The tallest cadets, including most of the athletes, were assigned to A and F companies, which marched on the flanks and were thus called "flankers." The smaller men, called "runts," were assigned to B, C, D and E companies, which marched in the middle, between the flankers. Because I was nearly six feet tall, I spent my plebe year in A Company and, following a corps reorganization in 1912, my last three years in F Company.

That first winter passed quickly, a blur of feverish, rigidly organized routine. Reveille at 0600. Company roll call outside. Breakfast at 0630(excellent food served by hired waiters). Room clean-up. Classroom work from 0800 to noon. Lunch (more excellent food). Classroom work from 1300 to 1600. Athletics or "free time" from 1600 to 1800. Then dinner (still more excellent food). After dinner, study or "free time." Taps at 2000. We marched to meals or classrooms by company or academic "sections." Weekends were likewise closely supervised with inspections, compulsory chapel and so on. We were not allowed to leave the Academy grounds except for a few

organized sporting events such as Army-Navy games. Discipline was enforced in part by the administration of demerits or "skins." We were allowed nine demerits a month. Any demerit beyond that had to be "walked off" in the "Area," with rifle, one hour per demerit, a humiliating—and boring—punishment. The first month after returning from the Plain, I racked up sixteen demerits, for such dumb things as twice knocking my hat off with my rifle and not having my collar properly adjusted at dinner. Walking off those seven hours had the desired effect on me. Thereafter I remained well below the allowable nine demerits.

Academically, we cadets were grouped into twelve-man sections, numbered 1 to 28, according to our grades. The top men were in Section 1; those with the worst grades ("goats") in 28. Based on my test scores at Jefferson Barracks, I started off near the bottom: Section 24 in math, Section 27 in English and history. However, by dint of hard study, I moved up throughout the year and by June my overall class standing was 49. Had it not been for English—my toughest course—I would have stood even higher. In the spring of 1912 I turned out for varsity baseball. I made the squad but not the first team. There were mar-

velous advantages to being on varsity athletic squads. We plebes were "recognized" by the upperclass-men. We did not have to say "sir" each time we spoke to them and we were spared hazing on the athletic fields and at mealtimes. We sat at a special training table in the dining hall where discipline was loose, almost nonexistent. I was inducted into a completely illegal secret Greek fraternity, Omicron Pi Phi, composed mostly of star athletes and student athletic managers. The membership included many cadets who would someday be world-famous generals. (The fraternity was abolished in the 1920s.) 3

By the fall of 1912, our cow (or sophomore) year, I had gained thirty pounds and weighed in at 178. I went out for varsity football, but owing to my inexperience, I failed to make the squad. However, that fall I earned a place on the junior varsity or "farm" team, Cullum Hall, which played local high schools. Our varsity football team had a winning season (5-3), but to our bitter disappointment, we lost to Navy (0-6) at Franklin Field in Philadelphia. Early in the season, our star running back, Ike Eisenhower, so badly injured his knee he had to give up his place on the squad. He became a cheerleader. Ike's knee injury was so persistent and severe it nearly cost him his commissi-

on two and a half years later, and it continued to trouble him the rest of his life. 4 The following spring, 1913, I was immensely pleased to make the varsity baseball team as left fielder. We had an outstanding season (16-6) and beat Navy 2-1 at home. The class of 1915 was granted its first furlough that following summer, 1913. I went home to Moberly and spent a leisurely two and a half months living with my mother, stepfather and two stepbrothers. I played baseball three times a week with a semi-pro Moberly team, refusing pay so that I would not become ineligible to play for West Point. Mary Quayle had finished

two years at St. Cloud Normal School and had graduated. She was then teaching at a school in Albert Lea, Minnesota, and was home for the summer. We began dating—going on picnics with friends and relatives, to Christian Church functions, to the Bijou, or sitting alone on her front porch. Mary planned to teach in Albert Lea for one more year, saving money for further college study. By that time, her younger sister, Sarah Jane (who now preferred to be called merely Jane), would have graduated from Moberly High School. The plan was for Mrs. Quayle, Mary and Jane to move temporarily to Columbia so that both girls could attend the university as day students.

After that summer, Mary and I began a correspondence, exchanging letters once a week. 5 In my yearling (or junior) year and in my first class (or senior) year, I became almost obsessively absorbed in athletics. In the fall of 1913 I won a slot on the varsity football team as a substitute center, playing in one game. We had a sensational season—eight wins including a 22-9 rout of Navy. The following year, 1914, our football team achieved a perfect season—nine wins, no losses. I played in five games including our 20-0 win over Navy. I earned a football letter but like Ike I sustained a knee injury that would plague me the rest of my life. During those same two

years I held my place in left field on the varsity baseball team and earned two more letters. Our 1914 won-loss record (10-5) was middling but we beat Navy. Our 1915 baseball team, which scored eighteen wins (including one over Navy) and only three losses, was officially described as "the best team that has ever represented the Academy." 6 In our final year, 1914-15, some of us remaining Augustines were finally promoted to cadet officers and noncoms. I was made first sergeant of F Company and was later promoted to cadet lieutenant. In early fall of 1914 World War I erupted in Europe. The conflict seem-

ed remote from our cloistered world. We received no official documents or reports on the war. Everything we knew about it—and that was very little —came from newspapers and periodicals. None of the new tactics or technology employed in Europe caused the slightest change in the curriculum at West Point. We continued to study the men and campaigns of the Civil War for the most part and, as first classmen, spent three days at Gettysburg, thoroughly grounding ourselves in that battle. Unfortunately my athletic activities during my four years at West Point had a pronounced impact on my grades and academic class standing. From

my plebe year class standing of 49, I slipped to 53 at the end of my cow year. I pulled that up sharply in my yearling year to 43, but my final standing in June 1915 slipped back to 44 out of 164 who graduated. Had I not given so much time and effort to athletics, I believe I could easily have graduated about twentieth. However, I have never regretted my sports obsession for a moment. It is almost trite to observe that in organized team sports one learns the important art of group cooperation in goal achievement. No extracurricular endeavor I know of could better prepare a soldier for the battlefield. West Point sports also gave me an excellent opportunity

to take the measure of many men who would serve with, or under, me in World War II. It is noteworthy, I think, that all the men on our 1914 baseball team who remained in the Army went on to become generals. Now, after four years at West Point, we were ready to take our places as second lieutenants in the small regular Army, which then consisted of about 5,000 officers and 100,000 men. Owing to the more rapid promotions, the most sought after branches were the corps of engineers and field artillery. I applied for engineers, artillery, and infantry in that order. I did not stand high enough to make engine-

ers or artillery and wound up in the infantry, along with cheerleader and yearbook editor Ike Eisenhower, who stood 61, and Jim Van Fleet, a football star, who stood 92. My roommate, Bennie Mills, who stood five from the bottom, chose the aviation section of the signal corps. At first I was a trifle disappointed and half regretted squandering so much time on athletics. But quite soon I got over my mild disappointment. Only a year after we graduated, the Army abolished "branch" promotions, and we all found ourselves on an equal footing in that regard. Moreover, we in the infantry soon learned that it is in that branch more than any other that a

soldier learns the art of leadership and command and, ultimately, has the best chance of reaching the topmost positions. Ike Eisenhower wrote the brief portrait of me in our yearbook, Howitzer, setting it off with a flattering anonymous quotation: "True merit is like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes." He noted my "greatest passion" was baseball, followed by "football and F Co." His conclusion was highly flattering. "His most promising characteristic is getting there, and if he keeps up the clip he's started, some of us will some day be bragging to our grandchildren that, ‘Sure, General Bradley was a classmate of mine.’ ” 7

FOUR When we graduated from West Point in June 1915, all of Europe was bleeding from the ghastliest war in the history of the world. The United States was not yet openly involved. Rather, we were caught up in trouble, or in today's jargon, a "limited war" in Mexico. Aside from a brief combined Army-Marine action in Vera Cruz, most

of the skirmishing took place along the border. 1 Most of us shavetail lieutenants in the infantry who stood high in our class had a choice of duty stations. Few of us elected duty on the Mexican border. As Eisenhower recalled: “This service was disagreeable. Usually, it separated a man from his family. Living conditions were rough. Anything was better to most officers than the border.” Eisenhower chose duty in the Philippines but was sent to the border anyway! Several others and I chose the 14th Infantry Regiment based in the Pacific Northwest. It was one of the few outfits that had not been skeletonized for Mexican border duty, and I

preferred to begin my career in a "normal garrison" atmosphere. We packed and made our farewells. Among my belongings were three new items: a .45 Colt pistol, which I had adjusted to a three-pound trigger pressure; a sword; and a pair of six-power field glasses. 2 We were granted a three-month "graduation leave," from June 12 to September 12. I spent that summer in Moberly, living with my mother and stepfather on a farm north of town. Mary Quayle, who had completed her junior year at the University of Missouri, often came up to visit her best friend, Rose Richardson. Mary and I began to see more and more of each other, picnicking, going to the Bijou, or

for long walks. I also played right field on the semi-pro Moberly baseball team, the Moberly Athletes, again without pay. 3 I had not dated in high school, had "dragged" only one girl to a hop in my four years at West Point, and was thus deplorably inexperienced in matters of the opposite sex. But Mary was endlessly fascinating to me. She was pretty, bright, ambitious and domineering, like my mother. She did not hesitate to order Second Lieutenant Bradley around. She had strong likes and dislikes about people. Those she liked, she could not do enough for. Those she disliked got an icy shoulder. Her college and teaching experience in Minnesota

and a year at the University of Missouri, where she and Jane had joined the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, had considerably matured and broadened her. She was no longer dependent on her Moberly roots and friends. She wanted to expand her horizons still more. We soon realized we were deeply in love. Before the summer was out, I gave her a white gold ring with a small solitaire diamond and we became officially engaged. We were to be married in June 1916, upon her graduation. 4 The 14th Infantry Regiment to which I reported on September 12, 1915, was commanded by Colonel R. H. Wilson. It was composed of three scattered battalions, all at about half or two-thirds

strength. The First Battalion was on detached service in Alaska, lending a military presence to that barren frontier. The Second Battalion was stationed at Fort Laughton, near Seattle, Washington, and the Third Battalion was at Fort George Wright, outside Spokane, at the western foot of the Rocky Mountains. I was assigned to the Third Battalion in Spokane, commanded by Captain A. J. Harris, then to K Company, commanded by Wilbur A. McDaniel, a one time schoolteacher who had been commissioned seventeen years earlier in the SpanishAmerican War and, owing to the Army's glacial promotion system, had not advanced beyond the rank of cap-

tain. He was a good soldier: I liked him immediately. The first sergeant, Ernest M. Johnson, was a man of uncommon ability. (He held a reserve commission of major.) In time, I would learn much from him, including typing. 5 Like most Army units in those days, K Company was understrength—only sixty or seventy men. Most of the enlisted men had long years of service. Why any of them joined the Army almost defies explanation. In those days, a man was considered a "recruit" until he had completed one year in the Army. As a private he was paid thirteen dollars a month. He put in countless years before he became eligible for promotion to corporal. (We had one

outstanding private in our company, and later, when a corporal's vacancy occurred, I unhesitatingly recommended him. But McDaniel turned him down because he only had five years service!) The Army placed great emphasis on marksmanship, even to the extent of financial incentives. An enlisted marksman earned an extra three dollars a month; an expert marksman five dollars a month. That helped a little, but obviously such low pay and slow promotion seldom attracted higher caliber personnel. Fort George Wright, located at the end of a Spokane trolley line, three miles out of town, was only several years old. Its buildings were brick, the

parade ground gravel. Two other new lieutenants and I were assigned to quarters in a three-bedroom brick duplex. We hired a black cook and established a mess to which we invited two other bachelor officers. One of us served as mess officer, buying the food, paying the cook; and at the end of the month, we split the cost five ways. It was quite reasonable, easily within our salaries of $141.67 a month. The other half of our duplex quarters was occupied by a man of rare wit, ability, intelligence and professionalism, twenty-nine-year-old Edwin Forrest Harding of the Class of 1909, who after six years in the infantry, was still a second lieutenant. Forrest Harding

was a serious student of history, a fine writer and a compulsive teacher. Soon after we arrived, Forrest organized an unofficial weekly gathering in his home to which he invited about six of the lieutenants on the post. For several hours under his guidance we would discuss small-unit tactics, squads and platoons in attacks on a variety of terrains and so on. These meetings were immensely stimulating and educational, often turning to broader discussions of military history. No single person in my early Army career had a more salutary influence on me than Forrest Harding. He instilled in me a genuine desire to thoroughly learn my profession. 6

In those days, garrison duty could not have been more pleasant or less demanding. We reported for duty about 7 a.m. Then for about four hours we worked with the men on close order drill (squads right, squads left, etc.) or went to the rifle range or, very occasionally, conducted simulated attacks on the platoon or squad level. Because I was a West Pointer with extensive experience in drilling, Captain McDaniel was content to let me handle these daily chores most of the time. At 11 a.m., we had "officers' call," an assembly of all officers to discuss various post problems or new regulations. After the noon meal, the remainder of the day was our own. I spent these

languorous fall afternoons hiking or going to the movies in Spokane. I also signed up for dancing lessons. In the fall, I bought a 12-gauge Winchester pump-action shotgun for forty dollars and hunted grouse with Sergeant Johnson. Winter soon set in, bringing subzero arctic blasts from the north. Almost predictably, the AWOL's, preferring the warm food and lodging of the guardhouse to the cold outside, began to straggle in. Since Wright was the only Army installation in the area, our guardhouse was soon fully occupied. Each of the AWOL's, of course, faced a court-martial, some on multiple charges. I was detailed as defense counsel

for the first man to come to trial. He had also been accused of stealing a suitcase. I boned upon the rudimentary law we had been taught at West Point, and by creating a doubt as to the man's true identity on the stealing charge, I managed to have him acquitted. When this news reached the guardhouse, all thirty-three remaining AWOL's urgently requested that I serve as their defense counsel. For several weeks I was the busiest man at Fort Wright, a poorman's Clarence Darrow, almost overwhelmed with my heavy case load. I was ultimately relieved of this interesting but onerous responsibility when my superiors transferred me to the opposite side of the

bench and appointed me a member of the court. The bitterly cold winter curtailed our drills and field exercises. As was customary at Fort Wright, organized indoor athletic competitions between the four companies of the battalion substituted for outdoor activity. There were four events: boxing, wrestling, high jumping and basketball. Knowing that I had actively participated in sports at the Academy, Captain McDaniel gave me the mission of coaching K Company. This was no light responsibility. As James Jones has depicted so graphically in From Here to Eternity, such matches were taken very seriously in the peacetime Army. A winning

season reflected great credit on the commanding officer of a unit. Often the results were noted in his official Army record, and could help with a promotion someday. I gladly accepted this assignment and others like it as I climbed the ladder of the peacetime Army. In fact, for the next twenty-odd years I usually coached or played on Army athletic teams. I was determined to keep myself in top-notch physical condition. Athletics also proved to be a good way to get to know the men in my outfit and let them get to know me. Besides that, it was good clean fun. 7 All this time, the civ