Brehon B. Somervell

At West Point in 1914

Brehon Burke Somervell was born on 9 May 1892 in Little Rock, Arkansas, the only child of William Taylor Somervell, a physician, and wife Mary née Burke, a schoolteacher.[3] The two of them opened Belcourt Seminary, a girls' finishing school in Washington, D.C., in 1906.[4]

Somervell was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York by Congressman Charles C. Reid of Arkansas.[4] He entered West Point in 1910 and graduated sixth out of the 106 cadets in the class of 1914. Like other high-ranking cadets of the period, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army Corps of Engineers.[5] Fellow graduates included future general officers such as Carl Spaatz, Frank W. Milburn, Ralph Royce, John B. Anderson, Charles P. Gross, Harold Francis Loomis, Vicente Lim, Jens A. Doe, Orlando Ward, James L. Bradley, Harry C. Ingles, and Harold R. Bull.[6]

Somervell traveled to Europe for his two months' graduation leave and was in Paris when World War I broke out.[5] Reporting to the U.S. Embassy in Paris for volunteer duty, he became an assistant to the military attaché. He took charge of refugee funds and dispensed $1,000,000 to help American citizens to get back home.[7]

On return to the United States, he was posted to an engineer battalion at Washington Barracks, DC. Scoring high marks in his Garrison Officers' School examinations, he was promoted to first lieutenant on 28 February 1915. During the Punitive Expedition into Mexico in 1916, he was for a time depot manager at Columbus, New Mexico, the main logistical base of the expedition. Later, he joined the expedition in Mexico, working on roads and as a supply officer.[8]

Lieutenant Colonel Brehon B. Somervell being decorated with the DSC by Major General Frank L. Winn at Nattenheim, Germany, December 1918.

Somervell returned to Washington Barracks to attend the Engineer School but his course was interrupted by the declaration of war by the United States on Germany on 6 April 1917. The course was abruptly terminated and Somervell, along with hundreds of other junior officers, was ordered to appear before an examination board that would determine his fitness for promotion. Following a favorable report from the board, Somervell was promoted to captain on 15 May 1917.[9] He helped organize the 15th Engineers, a rail transport unit, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In July 1917 this became the first engineer regiment to be sent overseas, arriving in England in July 1917 and France later that month. The 15th Engineers worked on several construction projects, including a munitions dump at Mehun-sur-Yèvre and an advanced depot and regulating station at Is-sur-Tille.[5] Somervell got his projects completed by working his men around the clock and deploying every available resource regardless of the cost.[9] For his role, Somervell was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal (DSM), the citation for which reads:

The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Army Distinguished Service Medal to Lieutenant Colonel (Corps of Engineers) Brehon Burke Somervell (ASN: 0-3665), United States Army, for exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services to the Government of the United States, in a duty of great responsibility during World War I. As Adjutant, 15th Engineers, during the period of organization and training, in charge of construction of the Mehun Ammunition Depot, in charge of the construction at Is-sur-Tille Depot, including the Gas Depot at Poinson and the Etain Engine Terminal; Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3, and Assistant Chief of Staff, G-1, 89th Division from October 1918 until the division returned to the United States, when he was assigned as Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4, 3d Army. In all these positions Lieutenant Colonel Somervell displayed unusual vision, initiative, sound judgment, and high professional skill, contributing in a conspicuous way to the successful operation of the American forces in France.[10]

He was promoted to major on 15 August 1917 and lieutenant colonel on 1 October 1918. While visiting some friends at the 89th Division, he volunteered his services to its chief of staff, Colonel John C. H. Lee, who accepted him as a temporary replacement for his Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3,[nb 1] in charge of operations, who had been captured a few days before.[11] For leading a three-man patrol to inspect damage to a bridge some 600 yards (550 m) in front of American lines, Somervell was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.[5] The citation for the medal reads:

The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Lieutenant Colonel (Corps of Engineers) Brehon Burke Somervell (ASN: 0-3665), United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in action while serving with 89th Division, A.E.F., near Pouilly, France, November 5 - 6, 1918. Voluntarily serving on the staff of the 89th Division, Lieutenant Colonel Somervell conducted the first engineering reconnaissance of the damaged bridges at Pouilly, advancing more than 500 meters beyond the American outposts, crossing three branches of the Meuse River, and successfully reconnoitering the enemy.[10]

He was one of only nine American officers, including Douglas MacArthur, Barnwell R. Legge, Sereno E. Brett or William J. Donovan, to have been awarded both the DSC and the Army DSM in the First World War.[12] A few days later Lee arranged for Somervell to be permanently assigned to the 89th Division as the G-4 Supply Officer.[13]

The 89th Division returned to the United States in May 1919 but Somervell remained behind as Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4,[nb 1] in charge of supply, of the Third Army, and the American Forces in Germany, as it was re-designated on 2 July 1919.[5] There, he met Anna Purnell, the daughter of a Chicago businessman, who was there as a YMCA volunteer. The two were married in August 1919. They had three children together, all daughters.[13] While in Germany, Somervell also met Walker Hines, a prominent New York corporate lawyer, whom he assisted with a survey of shipping and navigation on the Rhine River. Somervell reverted to the permanent rank of major on 1 July 1920.[5]

Returning to the United States in July 1920, Somervell was posted to the Office of the Chief of Engineers in Washington, D.C.. His war record earned him a place at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, reserved for the Army's best and most promising officers,[15] from August 1922 to June 1923.[16] He once again ranked near the top of his class. After graduation he was posted to the 1st New York Engineer District but soon obtained leave to assist Hines with a special study of navigation on the Rhine and Danube Rivers on behalf of the League of Nations, essentially a continuation of the work that the two men had done in 1920. He then attended the Army War College from 1925 to 1926.[15]

From 1926 to 1930 he was District Engineer, Washington, D.C. Engineer District. As such he became involved in a conflict between proponents of the development of hydroelectric power through damming the Great Falls of the Potomac River and the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. Despite his advocacy, the falls remain undammed to this day.[17] On 1 September 1930, Somervell was transferred to the Lower Mississippi Valley Division as Assistant Chief Engineer. The next year he became assistant to, and then the District Engineer of the Memphis District.[18] In 1933, he teamed up with Hines again, for an economic survey of Turkey, which culminated in a seven-volume report.[19] Named as District Engineer for Ocala, Florida, Somervell got behind a project to build the Cross Florida Barge Canal. Somervell was chosen to head the project but although President Franklin D. Roosevelt allocated emergency funds for the canal in 1935, opponents of the canal protested that it would cause seawater to seep into the groundwater, and work was stopped a year later. In the meantime, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel on 1 August 1935.[20]

In 1935, Somervell was appointed as head of the Works Progress Administration in New York City. Over the next three and a half years he spent $10,000,000 a month on Great Depression relief works. The biggest project was the construction of what became LaGuardia Airport. Somervell established a reputation as a man who could handle projects involving hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars.[21] Early in his administration he worked to repair relations with labor unions and left-wing groups that had suffered under his strongly anti-Communist predecessor Victor F. Ridder. He stated he had no objection to picketing of WPA headquarters.[22] He also downplayed talk of a “Red menace” in the New York WPA, once declaring that "I wouldn't know a Red if I saw one, and wouldn't do anything about it if I did."[23] Somervell's relations with WPA's arts program were particularly difficult. When Congress in 1940 required all WPA workers to sign a loyalty oath an increasingly anti-Communist Somervell ordered a deeper investigation of even those arts project workers who had signed the oath. He also began a program of censoring the content of WPA-financed murals and other art, giving instructions to “guard against anything in which the main idea is social content, rather than artistic value, and eliminate anything that may savor of propaganda, and to see that the project devotes itself to art and not politics.”[24] In his most controversial decision, in July 1940 he ordered the burning of three out of four murals on the history of aviation at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn because of the inclusion of supposed Communist symbols.[25][26]

Somervell retired from the Army on 30 April 1946 and moved to Ocala, Florida.[51] His wife Anna had died in January 1942, and he had married Mrs. Louise Hampton Wartmann, a former student at Belcourt, in March 1943.[13] Somervell accepted an offer to become president of Koppers, a Pittsburgh-based company that mined coal and manufactured and sold coal-based products. Applying the same managerial techniques that he had employed in the Army, he thoroughly reorganized the company, and doubled revenues and tripled profits over the next five years.[52]

Somervell suffered a series of health problems in the 1950s. He had an appendectomy in 1953 and a hernia operation in 1954. He suffered a severe heart attack in September 1954 and returned to his home Ocala to recuperate. In early 1955 he decided to resign as president and withdraw from day-to-day operations. He had a second, fatal heart attack at his home on 13 February 1955.[53] He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, not far from his "brain child", the Pentagon.[2] His other great creation, the Army Service Forces, did not survive, being abolished in May 1946.[54] The Washington Post lauded him as "one of the ablest officers the United States Army has produced".[2] The USAT General Brehon B. Somervell, a US Army Reserve logistics support vessel that can carry up to 2,000 short tons (1,800 t) of cargo, is named in his honor.[55]

Below is the ribbon bar of General Brehon B. Somervell:

Insignia	Rank	Component	Date
No insignia	Cadet	United States Military Academy	1 March 1910
No insignia in 1914	Second lieutenant	Regular Army	12 June 1914
	First lieutenant	Regular Army	28 May 1915
	Captain	Regular Army	15 May 1917
	Major	Temporary	5 August 1917
	Lieutenant colonel	Regular Army	1 October 1918
	Major	Regular Army	1 July 1920
	Lieutenant colonel	Regular Army	1 August 1935
	Brigadier general	Army of the United States	29 January 1941
	Major general	Army of the United States	28 January 1942
	Lieutenant general	Army of the United States	9 March 1942
	Colonel	Regular Army	1 July 1942
	Brigadier general	Regular Army	1 September 1943
	Major general	Regular Army	3 September 1943
	General	Army of the United States	6 March 1945
	Major general	Retired List	30 April 1946
	General	Retired List	4 June 1948

Source:[56]

• Ancell, R. Manning; Miller, Christine (1996). The Biographical Dictionary of World War II Generals and Flag Officers: The US Armed Forces. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-29546-8.
• Cullum, George W. (1920). Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point New York since its Establishment in 1802: Supplement Volume VI 1910–1920. Chicago, Illinois: R. R. Donnelly and Sons, The Lakeside Press. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
• Fine, Lenore; Remington, Jesse A. (1972). The Corps of Engineers: Construction in the United States. Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History.
• Millett, John D. (1954). The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army. Retrieved 13 April 2009.
• Ohl, John Kennedy (1994). Supplying the Troops: General Somervell and American Logistics in World War II. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois Press. ISBN 0-87580-185-4.
• Smith, R. Elberton (1959). The Army and Economic Mobilization. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army. ISBN 0-16-023939-7.
• Vogel, Steve (2007). The Pentagon: A History: The Untold Story of the Wartime Race to Build the Pentagon—and to Restore it Sixty Years Later. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-8129-7325-9.
• Wertheim, Eric (2007). The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World: their Ships, Aircraft, and Systems. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 9781591149552. OCLC 140283156.

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