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“Ike” Eisenhower ofKansas (1890-1969) attended West Point with Cadet Omar Bradley. Graduating in 1915, he made a name for himself as one of the Army’s
top trainers in the newly-formed U.S. Tank Corps. As a tanker, he formed a fast postwar friendship with a blustery Great War colonel
named George Patton. Eisenhower became one of the Army’s top planners, serving under General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines and
under General George C. Marshall in Washington. When war broke out, Eisenhower asked his friend Patton for a job with Patton’s I Armored
Corps, but the War Department had bigger things in mind for “Ike.”
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Omar Bradley (1893-1981) was born and raised in Randolph
County, Missouri. The son of a country school teacher, he discovered a gift for explaining complex mathematics, tactics, and weapon
use to students at West Point and the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Soft-spoken and unassuming, but with a steely eye
for a rifle target and terrain, Bradley served under General George C. Marshall in Washington before his classmate, General Eisenhower,
called for him to assist the stalled Tunisian Campaign against Rommel’s Afrika Corps and their Italian allies. After 28 years
in uniform, “Brad” served as assistant to General George Patton and commenced an extraordinary career as America’s top field commander. |
George S. Patton, Jr. (1885-1945), born to a wealthy Southern California family, dreamed of being a famous commander all his
life. He redesigned the Army’s cavalry saber, competed at the 1912 Olympics, rode with “Black Jack” Pershing against Pancho Villa,
and founded the U.S. Army’s tank school. Wounded in battle, he returned after World War I depressed to see the end of a glorious conflict.
His spirit was rekindled by his friendship with young Lieutenant Colonel Eisenhower, and he, Eisenhower and while assigned to the
Hawaiian Division in the 1920s, he met a crack-shot major named Bradley whom he would fight alongside in Tunisia, Sicily, France,
and Germany.
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