Bradley's ice cream


I had the great privilege yesterday of speaking with one of General Omar Bradley's aides, Colonel Allan Little, now retired from the U.S. Army. The colonel had served as the general's senior aide-de-camp for the last two and a half years of his life. If Chet Hanson was Bradley's Alpha, Little was his Omega, with a great number of insights into the man.

He shared a few stories, some of which I hope to get a chance to elaborate on at some point. But my favorite was one that was all Bradley:

During what we now know as the Battle of the Bulge, with his headquarters within artillery range of the enemy and Nazi special ops units rumored to be operating behind the lines, Bradley reluctantly agreed to take a single precaution for his well-being, moving his room from the front of the hotel where he'd set up to a place further back in the building. (He'd finally given up living in the back of a truck, though I suspect he did so only reluctantly.)

However, he did see to it that the ice cream machine his aides had managed to locate was surrounded with sandbags and properly protected. Some things you didn't take chances with.