John Bradley (1867–1908)

John Smith Bradley was born on February 15, 1867, in Randolph County, Missouri. His father, Thomas Minter Bradley, served in the Confederate army during the Civil War and married his mother, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, shortly after the war ended. John was the eldest of nine Bradley children.

Traditionally, the Bradleys were farmers. John was an exception. By attending a country school in Clark, Missouri, and by learning on his own, John Bradley became a teacher. Starting in 1888, he taught in several rural schools over the next twenty years. His salary was never more than forty dollars a month. During school breaks, John Bradley earned much-needed income by working for local farmers.

Omar Bradley described his father as a combination farmer, sportsman, intellectual, and frontiersman. John Bradley was physically strong and was reported to be the best shot in the county. He taught Omar how to hunt and shoot. Baseball was one of his favorite pastimes. Known to carve his own bats, John Bradley taught himself to throw a curve ball and organized local leagues.

John Bradley married Sarah Elizabeth Hubbard on May 12, 1892. “Bessie” lived with her family on a forty-acre farm near Clark, Missouri. She had been one of John Bradley’s students and was sixteen when they married. Exactly nine months later, Omar Nelson Bradley was born. Bradley became a father a second time in 1900, but his infant son Raymond Calvert died of scarlet fever in 1902.

Too poor to afford a horse and buggy, John Bradley walked to work. During the winter of 1907-08, while teaching at a school six miles away, he developed a case of pneumonia. He died in his bed on January 31, 1908. John Smith Bradley was a few days short of his forty-first birthday.

Sarah Elizabeth Hubbard Bradley (1875–1931)

Sarah Elizabeth Hubbard, born April 18, 1875, was one of five children. Her father, Henry Clay Hubbard, had served in the Union Army during the Civil War. He married Mary Elizabeth Spurling after the war. The Hubbards lived in a three-room log home on a small farm near Clark, Randolph County, Missouri.

Sarah, known as “Bessie,” attended a rural school near Clark. The one-room school’s teacher was John Smith Bradley. The two fell in love and were married at the Hubbard farm on May 12, 1892. Bessie gave birth to their first child on February 12, 1893. They named him Omar after a local newspaper editor. A few years later Bessie’s sister, Emma, the mother of two, died of tuberculosis. The Bradleys opened their home to their nieces Nettie and Opal. In 1900, Bessie gave birth to her second child and named him Raymond Calvert. He died two years later of scarlet fever.

In 1908, John Smith Bradley died at the family home in Higbee. A few months later, Bessie moved to Moberly. She became a professional seamstress, took in boarders, and enrolled her son in high school. On Christmas Day 1910, Bessie married John Robert Maddox. Maddox was a poor farmer and father of two boys whose wife had died. The two remained married for the next twenty-one years. On June 23, 1931, Bessie suffered a fatal stroke. She was buried next to her first husband and infant son in Log Chapel Cemetery, Higbee, Missouri. Omar Bradley wrote of her: “My mother, blue-eyed, strong-minded and entirely gray-haired before she was twenty, was an unfailingly cheerful and resourceful women.”

Mary Elizabeth Quayle Bradley (1892–1965)

Born July 25, 1892, Mary Elizabeth Quayle was the daughter of Charles and Eudora Goodfellow Quayle. She had one sister, Sarah Jane, who was two years younger. Charles Quayle was the sheriff of Moberly and a highly respected citizen. When Mary was ten, her father died of tuberculosis.

Mary attended Moberly High School and graduated in 1910. She then moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota, for college, where an aunt was a teacher. Following two years of college, Mary took a teaching job in Albert Lea, Minnesota. In 1914, Mary, Sarah Jane, and their mother moved to Columbia, Missouri, so the girls could attend the University of Missouri.

In the summer of 1915, Mary became engaged to Omar Bradley who had just graduated from the United States Military Academy. Mary had known Bradley for some time. The families were neighbors in Moberly, and the two were in the same high school class. They planned to marry in the spring of 1916; however, only a few weeks before the ceremony, the army ordered Bradley to the Mexican border. The wedding was postponed. Shortly afterwards, Mary contracted typhoid fever. She was ill for months. While in the hospital, she lost all of her hair. Finally, on December 28, 1916, Mary Quayle and Omar Bradley were married in Columbia, Missouri.

For the next forty-nine years, Mary Quayle Bradley was an “army wife.” She moved many times, from one army post to another. There were other times when she was separated from her husband for months. After two problem pregnancies, she gave birth to a healthy daughter in 1923 and named her Elizabeth. As Mrs. Omar Bradley, Mary met many important military and political leaders.

When General Bradley retired from the army, the couple settled in Los Angeles. They then moved to Washington, DC, where Mary was close to her six grandchildren. In poor health, Mary entered Walter Reed Hospital where she died of leukemia on December 1, 1965. She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The Threat of War

The threat of war had become real by the late 1930s. Japan invaded China in 1937. The United States and other nations protested, but did little to make Japan stop. Germany invaded Poland in 1939. As a result, France and Britain declared war on Germany. At the time this political cartoon was published, Germany was invading France. Americans were very worried about their future. Would the U.S. have to go to war, too?

Daniel R. Fitzpatrick was the creator of “Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.” He won two Pulitzer Prizes for his editorial cartoons. “Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse” appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on June 4, 1940.

The following points may help to interpret “Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse”:

• Apocalypse means the end of the world.
• The Bible uses the term “four horsemen of the apocalypse” to refer to causes of mankind’s destruction.
• Fitzpatrick’s “fifth horseman” implies that there is an additional cause of mankind’s destruction.
• The face of the “fifth horseman” is a death skull.
• The hairstyle of the “fifth horseman” is the same as Adolf Hitler’s.
• The “fifth horseman” has a swastika armband, symbol of the Nazi Party.
• “Air power” refers to the powerful German Luftwaffe, or air force.

[St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 4, 1940]

Normandy

Early in World War II, Germany defeated France. After the United States entered the war, it made plans with Britain to drive the Germans out of France. The code word for the planned invasion was “Overlord.” Operation Overlord would put armies on the shores of northern France at a place known as Normandy. The beaches where the armies would land were given code words: Gold, Sword, Juno, Utah, and Omaha.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower was in charge of all “Allied” troops: American, British, and Canadian. It was up to him to decide when the invasion would begin. The code word for that day was “D-Day.” Nobody, not even Eisenhower, knew ahead of time when D-Day was. That way, German spies could not find out when the attack would begin. Although there were many appointed “D-Days” during World War II, Operation Overlord’s D-Day is the most famous. When Eisenhower decided all was ready, he set June 6, 1944, as D-Day for the Normandy invasion.

Operation Overlord was well planned, but risky. The Germans were sure to fight hard. As it turned out, the invasion resulted in about ten thousand American, British, and Canadian casualties. The deadliest fighting took place at Omaha Beach. At least 1,500 Americans died that morning. Twice that number were wounded. The Germans were forced to retreat. Hundreds of ships brought the tons of equipment and goods needed by the Allies to remain in France.

General Omar Bradley commanded the American troops that landed on D-Day. His army eventually numbered over one million, the largest ever commanded by an American general. During the rest of 1944, the Germans were pushed back toward the borders of Germany. Bradley’s army advanced deep into Germany in 1945 and played a key role in winning the war in Europe.

The Soldier's General

More than sixteen million citizens served in the U.S. military during World War II. About eleven million were in the army while the rest served in the navy and marines.

People relied heavily on newspapers for information during World War II. One of the most widely read journalists was Ernie Pyle. During the fighting in Sicily (1943), General Eisenhower told Pyle to “go discover Bradley.” After meeting Bradley, Pyle wrote a lot about the Missouri general. He was especially impressed by the attention Bradley paid to the care and treatment of his soldiers. Pyle praised him as the “soldier’s general.”* That is the nickname Bradley has been known by ever since.

Bradley and Pyle became good friends. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the general invited the correspondent aboard the warship Augusta to observe the landing. Later in the war, Pyle was killed during a battle. He was mourned by the millions who read his reports on the war and by his friend Omar Bradley.

*Some writers transformed Pyle’s label for Bradley into “the GI’s General.” During World War II, however, the initials “GI” were not used to stand for an American soldier. Rather, “GI” was an abbreviation for government issue or general issue.