U.S. Army
At West Point Bradley played three years of varsity baseball including the 1914 team, from which every player remaining in the army became a general. He graduated from West Point in 1915 as part of a class that contained many future generals, and which military historians have called "the class the stars fell on". There were ultimately 59 generals in that graduating class, with Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower attaining the rank of General of the Army.
Bradley was commissioned into the infantry and was first assigned to the 14th Infantry Regiment. He served on the U.S.-Mexico border in 1915. When war was declared, he was promoted to captain and sent to guard the Butte, Montana copper mines.
Bradley joined the 19th Infantry Division in August 1918, which was scheduled for European deployment, but the influenza pandemic and the armistice prevented it.
Between the wars, he taught and studied. From 1920–24, he taught mathematics at West Point. He was promoted to major in 1924 and took the advanced infantry course at Fort Benning, Georgia. After brief duty in Hawaii, he studied at the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth in 1928–29. Upon graduating from the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he served as an instructor in tactics at the Infantry School. There the assistant commandant, Lieutenant Colonel George C. Marshall called him "quiet, unassuming, capable, with sound common sense. Absolute dependability. Give him a job and forget it." From 1929, he taught at West Point again, taking a break to study at the Army War College in 1934. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1936 and worked at the War Department; after 1938 he was directly under Army Chief of Staff George Marshall. In February 1941, he was promoted to (wartime) temporary rank of brigadier general (bypassing the rank of colonel) (this rank was made permanent in September, 1943). The temporary rank was conferred to allow him to command Fort Benning (he was the first from his class to become even a temporary general officer). In February 1942, he was made a temporary major general (a rank made permanent in September 1944) and took command of the 82nd Infantry Division before being switched to the 28th Infantry Division in June.
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