Me and General of the Army Omar Bradley

In the summer of 1952, I was a supply clerk for the 40th Military Police Battalion on Okinawa. One Saturday, we had a 10,000 man parade for General Mathew Ridgeway and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. My company, the 524th MP Service Company was there along with units of the 29th Infantry Regiment, the Artillery and many other units. They even had 6 members of the Guard Dog Unit filling in the far corner.

We listened to General Ridgeway tell us about the war and why we were there. I was there because I was drafted! I was also lucky that I didn’t have to go to Korea.

The next day, Sunday, I was sitting by myself in my supply room in the basement, when I heard “Attention” being called all over the building. My first sergeant stepped into the room and called “Attention”. General Ridgeway stood there by the door at attention, barrel chested with all his ribbons and looking like he had a steel spine. Admiral William Fechtler was next . Next to him was AF General Hoyt Vandenberg taking off his cap, slouching and lighting a cigarette. Next to him was General J. Lawton Collins, who was later killed in Korea, Vice Admiral Merlin O'Neill of the Coast Guard and General Lemuel Shepherd, Jr. Commandant of the Marine Corps. Coming right at me was General of the Army Omar Bradley. He didn’t look a bit like the Omar Bradley played by Karl Malden in the D Day movie! I came to the best attention I had ever done. When he said “At Ease’. it was also the best. Then he said, “Let’s go sit down”. I had a couple of chairs I had used to sit and talk with my buddies in.

He asked me if I was getting my mail O.K. and then how the food was. And then he dropped the bomb shell “How do you think the war in Korea was coming along?” I told him that I thought it was coming along fine and I told him one reason why. At one of our recent Saturday morning infantry training classes, our company commander was giving a critique of our mission, when a staff car came up and a message was given to him. He picked 6 of our best MPs and they marched off. We found out later that they had been sent along with other MPs in the Far East Command to help quell the rioting on Koje Do (an island off the southern tip of Korea), where 10,000 communist prisoners were threatening to break out and be at the backs of our men holding on in South Korea.

He thanked me, spun on his heels and left the room followed by the Joint Chiefs. I had read the book later, “A Soldier’s Soldier” and it caught his spirit exactly. In my case, he put me at ease like a friendly grandfather would have done. I knew a retired admiral in Paradise and we agreed that Bradley was the finest officer to come out of World War II of any service.