The class the stars fell on has part(s) James A. Van Fleet
Careers
Of the 164 graduates in the class, 102 (62 percent) served overseas during World War I before the armistice of 11 November 1918, although only 56 (34 percent) saw actual combat. This was not unusual; nearly 60 percent of the Army's regular officers did not serve overseas. A widespread belief that those who had served overseas would receive preferential treatment, including faster promotion, was not borne out by subsequent events. Promotion was by seniority, and glacially slow. Officers commissioned between November 1916 and November 1918 made up 55.4 percent of the Army's officers in 1926. This "hump" constituted a major personnel problem that was solved only by the Army's rapid expansion after 1940 in response to World War II. Much of the success of the class is attributable to being fortunate enough to be just ahead of the hump, but not too old to assume positions of great responsibility during World War II.Omar Bradley, for example, was promoted to first lieutenant on 1 July 1916, captain on 15 May 1917, and major on 17 June 1918. He had been returned to the grade of captain on 22 January 1920, and promoted to major again on 1 July 1920, only to be returned to captain again on 4 November 1922. He was promoted to major a third time on 25 June 1924, and remained one for twelve years before becoming a lieutenant colonel on 26 June 1936. He was promoted to brigadier general in February 1941.In the inter-war period, officers led a "country club existence". They had a high social standing, equivalent to that of an upper-middle-class professional. They normally worked a 30-hour week, which gave them plenty of time to spend with their families, and for sports. They and their families had access to free medical and dental care. They had free life insurance, and an adequate salary, which could be stretched because Army commissaries and post exchanges sold many everyday goods tax-free.  They invariably lived on-base in good housing, and in tight-knit and supportive communities. When posted overseas, they took their families with them. A secure and steady job was highly prized during the Great Depression years from 1929 to 1939, and resignations were rare.There were two levels of advanced schooling. The first was the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, which concentrated on teaching officers both command and staff duties related to corps and divisions. Although viewed as competitive, nearly all officers eventually attended. A 1937 survey showed that 97 percent of the Army's colonels and 95 percent of its lieutenant colonels were graduates. There were two senior schools, the Army War College and the Army Industrial College. The Army War College taught the handling of higher formations. The Army Industrial College taught industrial mobilization.The Army's training program attracted criticism, both at the time and subsequently. In 1937, Brigadier General George C. Marshall felt that in merging instruction on command and staff duties, the Command and General Staff School had neglected the former in favor of the latter, with officers being prepared for staff duties in peacetime rather than the chaos of command in wartime. Brigadier General Lesley J. McNair conducted a survey of graduates in 1939 that found that most felt that there was too much emphasis on obsolete skills like equitation. For this reason, the staff rides were disliked. While most considered the map exercises the most valuable part of the curriculum, some noted that students spent time discovering for themselves things that they could have been told.Writing in 2011, Jörg Muth concluded that "At Fort Leavenworth, school solutions were always the norm. Ineffective courses were led by instructors who sometimes lacked knowledge of their fields and usually failed in didactics and pedagogics ... It seems in general not to have been a good idea to challenge the instructors at Leavenworth in any way if an officer student wanted to leave the school with a respectable grade." While the education system undoubtedly failed in some key areas, it did create a body of competent division and corps commanders.The first member of the class to wear a star was Esteves, who was appointed adjutant general of Puerto Rico with the rank of brigadier general in February 1939. During World War II, Eisenhower and Bradley rose to four-star rank. They made decisions that dramatically affected the careers of their classmates. Concerned that Major General Roscoe Woodruff, whose VII Corps was scheduled to spearhead the Normandy landings, had no amphibious experience, Bradley replaced him with Major General J. Lawton Collins. Woodruff returned to the United States. He later distinguished himself in command of the 24th Infantry Division in amphibious operations in the Philippines campaign.A worse fate befell Major General Henry J. F. Miller, who leaked details of the invasion date at a dinner party in April 1944. He was reduced to his permanent rank of lieutenant colonel and sent home. Eisenhower wrote a letter to him explaining that, "I know of nothing that causes me more real distress than to be faced with the necessity of sitting as a judge in cases involving military offences by officers of character and good record, particularly when they are old and warm friends."  Miller retired due to physical disability on 30 November 1944. In December 1948 he was promoted to brigadier general on the retired list. He died on 7 January 1949.Apart from those who became generals, the best known member of the class is Louis A. Merrilat, who played college football with the Army Black Knights alongside Bradley and Eisenhower, and was selected as a first-team All-American in both 1913 and 1914. He was wounded in battle while serving in France during World War I, and later played in the National Football League for the Canton Bulldogs in the 1925 NFL season. He became a soldier of fortune, training Iran's Persian Guard, working with the Chinese Army in the 1930s, and serving in the French Foreign Legion. During World War II, he returned to active duty with the US Army, reaching the rank of colonel.The last surviving general of the class was James Van Fleet, who commanded the 4th Infantry Division, 90th Infantry Division and III Corps during World War II, and the U.S. Eighth Army in the Korean War. Celebrations for his 100th birthday on 19 March 1992 included a parachute drop by the Army's Golden Knights. A West Point Cadet, James Ward, remarked that: "Everything we aspire to be, he's already done. He's the epitome of the Long Gray Line." Van Fleet died on 23 September 1992, at the age of 100.The last surviving member of the class was Edmund De Treville Ellis. Commissioned in the cavalry, he later transferred to the Quartermaster Corps, with which he served in the European Theater during World War II and during the 1948 Berlin airlift. He retired from the Army as a colonel on 31 March 1950. He became the oldest living graduate of West Point in October 1990, and the last surviving member of the class of 1915 on the death of Van Fleet. He died at the age of 104 on 22 January 1995. Like Van Fleet, he was interred in Arlington National Cemetery.
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