The G.l.'s General

A SOLDIER'S STORY (618 pp.)--Omar N. Bradley--Holt ($5).

Omar Bradley's early career as a soldier was no more unusual than his reason for becoming one (West Point was free and he was poor). While some of his classmates ('15) helped to make military history in World War I, Bradley commanded a guard company in the copper mines at Butte, Mont. He began to think that his "career had been washed out from the start." But at Fort Benning in 1929, he had worked for a lieutenant colonel named George Marshall.

When, in 1943, Marshall needed an "eyes and ears" man to check on G.I. battle performance in Tunisia, he sent for Omar Bradley. It was a congenial assignment, because Bradley's new commander was a West Point classmate who had played football with him (and had also sat stateside in World War I)--Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Retouched Portrait. As a personal narrative, General Bradley's A Soldier's Story is basically like many others already told by U.S. generals in World War II: long peacetime years of low rank, low pay and routine chores; then in middle life, such command opportunities as they had never dreamed of. Many fine peacetime officers failed in combat (no one fired them more ruthlessly and properly, for cause, than Bradley), and perhaps no one would have been surprised if Bradley had failed too. After 32 years in the Army, he was past 50 when he heard his first battlefield shot, a methodical professional with none of Eisenhower's catalytic ease and none of Patton's bravado imagination. But Bradley had his own virtues: sound tactical and logistical sense, a complete lack of side that won him the devotion of subordinates, and a willingness to take chances when the payoff promised rich.

Important as A Soldier's Story is for its candid account of decisions and battle consequences at Army and Army-group levels, it comes at a moment in Bradley's career when its immediate interest lies in the picture it gives of its author. Bradley found time to write A Soldier's Story while on active duty in the world's top military job, the chairmanship of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, during one of the crises of world history. At a publisher's cocktail party in Manhattan, Bradley emphasized that he had aimed to write a "readable" book. As generals' books go (and with some help from his old friend and military aide, Lieut. Colonel Chester Hansen), Bradley has succeeded in his aim. He has also sketched a self-portrait that is remarkably different from the standard wartime picture of a kindly, homely G.l.'s general.

Simple Directness. This Bradley is also a frankly boastful winner. Behind the appearance of modesty, there is a persistent if disarming claim to near-infallibility. Admitting boners such as his famed "calculated risk" in the Ardennes (where he guessed the Germans would not attack; result: 59,000 U.S. casualties), Bradley rationalizes them until they come to seem almost like brilliance. He was jealous of his command prerogatives, and his ill-concealed grudge against Britain's Marshal Montgomery at this late date is oddly suggestive of petulance. If A Soldier's Story does not add a bit of strain to the relations of Eisenhower and Montgomery in their current effort to build a Western European army, it will not be because Bradley pulled his punches.

George Marshall ranks tops in Bradley's book, followed by Eisenhower, General Joe Collins and the First Army's General Courtney Hodges (now retired). But Patton comes off like a caricature of a general, and many a lesser commander (Generals Terry Allen, Ryder, Harmon) is built up only to be knocked down.

Some of the apparent self-laudation in A Soldier's Story may come from Bradley's admiring literary collaborator, who kept a diary. For Bradley's own candor and simple directness shine through the persistent smugness of his book. Moreover, as a lucid statement of allied strategy, A Soldier's Story is second only to Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe--and considerably more detailed. Perhaps it is simply a mistake for generals to strive for "readability."

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