In this episode we'll be looking at Omar Bradley.

Omar Bradley would command the largest American field army of the Second World War.

In many respects he is now overshadowed by some of his more flamboyant contemporaries such as George Patton.

Born in 1893 in Missouri and accepted into the military academy at West Point in

1911 his graduation year would be known as the class the Stars fell on

due to so many graduates earning their general stars. He didn't see action in

Europe during the First World War and during the interwar years promotion was slow. He held a series of

training posts where he met George C Marshall who later as Chief of Staff

masterminded the American Army's war effort during World War II.

Marshall was reputed to have kept a little black book where he noted promising officers,

presumably Bradley was in it. With the outbreak of war and Marshall's promotion

Bradley jumped from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general. First in North

Africa then in Sicily Bradley proved to be reliable.

His next posting was to command American ground forces for the evasion of Europe, on D-Day,

commanding the First Army, then 12th Army Group when it activated.

12th Army Group would take part in some of the toughest fighting of the war, the

fallay pocket, the Battle of the Hurtum Forest, part of the secret line campaign

will be one of the most costly actions

fought by the American Army. His men took the initial brunt during the Battle of

the Bulge and in the closing months of the war

first army would capture the bridge at Remargan over the Rhine, two weeks before

Field Marshal Montgomery's setpiece to cross the Rhine Operation Plunder.

...