1. Omar Bradley
   Dwight Eisenhower
2. Douglas MacArthur
   George Patton

Of course, it's Eisenhower. Bradley seems to have had the temperament to gain high political office too, if he'd had the inclination. Patton and MacArthur had rather inflammable natures, which probably would have precluded them. As we know, America would never elect a president who was unsuited in temperament for the office.

1. Omar Bradley
   George Marshall
2. Douglas MacArthur
   George Patton

These were custom-made for MacArthur by the Missouri Meerschaum Company. A vresion of his pipe is still made today in his honor.

1. Bradley and Patton
   Patton and Eisenhower
2. Eisenhower and Bradley
   Clark and MacArthur

The class of 1915 is often called "the class the stars fell on." Stars denote a general, and an amazing 59 graduates out of 164 attained that rank.

1. Omar Bradley
   Mark Clark
2. George Patton
   Lesley McNair

This was Patton. He designed the M1913 Cavalry Saber, which is also called the Patton Sword.

1. Mark Clark
   Dwight Eisenhower
2. George Patton
   Omar Bradley

Don't worry, this nickname is nothing sinister. He apparently had a talent for getting sweets into the cadet barracks, not alcohol (which is probably what you'd suspect at first).

1. Omar Bradley
   George Marshall
2. Douglas MacArthur
   Lesley McNair

Marshall went to the Virginia Military Institute. Still in service today, VMI is known for its spartan cadet life and strong discipline.

1. Omar Bradley
   Mark Clark
2. George Marshall
   Dwight Eisenhower

We suspect more than one of these guys was handy with a baseball. However, it was Bradley who turned down offers to turn pro during his years on the West Point varsity team, where he excelled at both hitting and fielding.

1. a chief justice of the Supreme Court
   a founder of MGM studios
2. a British prime minister
   a founder of the New York Times

Marshall was distantly related to John Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the United States. Both men were descendants of Thomas Jefferson. (Just by the way, you know; NBD.)

1. Steven
   Stephen
2. Smith
   it stood alone.

Don't be fooled! It was Harry S Truman whose middle "S" honored both his grandfathers, but didn't actually stand in for a name.

1. George S. Patton
   Mark Clark
2. Dwight Eisenhower
   Omar Bradley

Eisenhower was stationed stateside, training young officers for service. Fun fact: One of his young trainees was F. Scott Fitzgerald, who spent far too much time scribbling the first draft of his first novel while pretending to study war textbooks.

1. the Sicily campaign
   Operation Fortitude
2. D-Day
   Operation Torch

Patton was deeply involved in Operation Fortitude, a campaign to misdirect the attention of the Nazis. For this reason, Patton was stationed in England, where he was supposedly preparing for a cross-channel attack on Pas de Calais. He did not get to France until after the crucial days of Operation Overlord.

1. Mark Clark
   Dwight Eisenhower
2. George Patton
   Douglas MacArthur

Dwight Eisenhower overpassed General Marshall, the more experienced military man, in getting this appointment. It wasn't a cutthroat maneuever, though -- Marshall did not seek the appointment.

1. avoiding combat
   an affair with a secretary
2. leaking information to the press
   slapping enlisted men

In two separate incidents, Patton slapped privates who had battle shock. Patton was an eager fighter who had no tolerance for what he thought was malingering, but his superiors saw it differently. Patton was forced to apologize to both men.

1. George Marshall
   Dwight Eisenhower
2. Omar Bradley
   Lesley McNair

Eisenhower was not yet Supreme Allied Commander, but he outranked Patton. He required the impulsive general to apologize to the soldiers, and to the troops in general.

1. Omar Bradley
   Douglas MacArthur
2. Dwight Eisenhower
   George Patton

The Louisiana Maneuvers were massive military exercises conducted in that state in 1940 and 1941. MacArthur was in the Philippines at that time.

1. He was the youngest person ever to do so.
   He was the oldest person to do so.
2. He was the first person with Jewish ancestry to do so.
   He was the only person to do so who had never been wounded in combat.

Clark was the youngest-ever four-star general. To clarify, it's not true that he wasn't wounded -- he sustained injuries from an artillery attack in WWI.

1. George Patton
   Dwight Eisenhower
2. Mark Clark
   both #1 and #2

Patton used his small Stinson Voyager to oversee the vast territory of Fort Benning, keeping a paternal eye on his troops training there. Eisenhower, meanwhile, made a flight over the Philippines while stationed there.

1. Mark Clark
   Dwight Eisenhower
2. George Patton
   Omar Bradley

Clark evaded death twice in a matter of months in 1944. The first time was when a naval boat mistakenly fired on his ship, killing several men near him. The second time was in the plane crash, in which the wing of the plane was torn partially off by a balloon cable. These incidents couldn't have been fun, but his survival seems to illustrate that Clark was born under a lucky star.

1. Omar Bradley
   Mark Clark
2. Lesley McNair
   Jacob Devers

McNair was a lieutenant general when an Army air wing dropped their bombs short of their target, killing him and approximately 100 soldiers. He was promoted to general posthumously.

1. George Marshall
   Mark Clark
2. Omar Bradley
   Dwight Eisenhower

This was Clark, the young four-star general. Whether the taking of Rome was strategically necessary, as compared to pursuing the German 10th Army, has been debated, and is a minor blot on Clark's biography.

1. performing a blood transfusion
   rescuing a war dog
2. praying for rain to stop
   repairing a Jeep

Improbable, but true! During the Battle of the Bulge, when rains were holding up an important mission, Patton asked Colonel James O' Neill to say a prayer for better weather. O'Neill complied with a poetic prayer for the rains to stop, so the soldiers could carry out God's work, and the rain did clear up.

1. Secretary of Defense
   Secretary of State
2. president of Princeton
   both #1 and #2

Marshall had a very distinguished political career. Serving under Truman, he held both these posts. The Marshall Plan, which laid out directives for Europe's recovery from WWII, was named for him

1. Omar Bradley
   Mark Clark
2. Dwight Eisenhower
   George Patton

Clark, like Eisenhower, was good at dealing with difficult personalities. That might explain, in part, his good relationship with the curmudgeonly British prime minister.

1. Tobruk, North Africa
   Washington, D.C.
2. the Philippines
   Vichy, France

MacArthur was commander of the US Armed Forces in the Far East, but was forced to flee the Philippines for Australia ahead of the Japanese. Washington frowned on his use of "I" instead of "We" in his famous statement, but MacArthur was characteristically unrepentant.

1. He declined it.
   He won it posthumously.
2. His father won it as well, earlier.
   The ceremony was protested by antiwar activists.

Douglas MacArthur won the medal for his valor in the Philippines campaign. His father, Arthur MacArthur Jr., won it for heroics at Missionary Ridge, Tenn., during the Civil War.

1. George Marshall
   Dwight Eisenhower
2. Mark Clark
   both #1 and #2

A general winning a peace prize? It's true. Marshall was honored for the Marshall Plan, which helped western Europe recover from WWII.

1. George Patton
   Douglas MacArthur
2. Omar Bradley
   George Marshall

Patton knew the former leader of "Mosby's Raiders" while he was growing up. Mosby's reputation had generally survived the South's loss, and in his later life he was active in politics, and knew Patton's well-connected family.

1. Mark Clark
   Douglas MacArthur
2. Omar Bradley
   George Marshall

Much of MacArthur's military career involved the East Asian nations, and he was the natural choice to lead the landing force at Inchon. However, MacArthur was later relieved of his command in Korea, because President Truman felt he did not respect the ultimate authority of the civilian government -- meaning, mainly, Truman himself.

1. performed maintenance on airplanes
   guarded copper mines
2. trained tank drivers
   tested parachutes

Though this sounds like a civilian job, Bradley was an Army captain when he performed this duty. In time, he was scheduled to be sent overseas, but peace was achieved before he could serve there.

1. as the brother of a competitor
   as a competitor
2. as a security guard
   as a sports reporter

Patton was an accomplished fencer. He competed at the Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden.

1. as a competitor
   as head of security
2. as a boxing official
   as president of the US Olympic Committee

This was an uncharacteristically political position for the grizzled warrior. But at 48, he would have been too old to compete successfully in most sports. (Although we have to note that shooting is an Olympic discipline that's been kind to older participants, and you'd imagine MacArthur had some experience at it!)

1. George Marshall
   Douglas MacArthur
2. George Patton
   Mark Clark

MacArthur became Japan's de facto leader, exercising power through the emperor, Hirohito, after the war. Later, the Japanese people referred to him as "gaijin shogun," meaning a powerful military leader (shogun) of foreign birth (gaijin).

1. Mark Clark
   Douglas MacArthur
2. George Patton
   Lesley McNair

Patton died not long after the war's end, after a failed stint as military governor of Bavaria. Ironically, the car crash was part of a hunting trip that his colleagues had arranged to cheer him up -- he had seemed depressed that the war was over, and with it his true military career.

1. Mark Clark
   Douglas MacArthur
2. Lesley McNair
   both #2 and #3

The causes of this 1914 military action are too detailed to go into here. But it was a formative experience for both MacArthur and McNair.

1. France
   Germany
2. Belgium
   the Philippines

Predictably, the high-ranking Eisenhower oversaw the American Zone in occupied Germany. Unlike Japan, which was allowed to keep its emperor as a figurehead leader, Germany saw its entire government dismantled, with the Allies dividing control of the country.