General of the Army

General of the Army, or less formally five-star general, is a military rank peculiar to the United States, and has been held by only a few persons in history. It is equivalent to the rank of field marshal. On July 25, 1866, the US Congress established the grade of "General of the Army" for Ulysses S. Grant, and later appointed William T. Sherman (in 1869) and then Philip H. Sheridan (in 1888, just weeks before he died) to the rank. In 1919, John J. Pershing was named General of the Armies of the United States, and held the rank until he died, in 1948. In all of these cases, the generals wore four stars as their insignia, except between 1872 and 1888, when Sherman and Sheridan wore two stars with the arms of the United States in between. Pershing was authorized to specify his own insignia, but chose to wear the standard four stars of a full general. The five-star rank was created by Public Law 482 of the 78th Congress, passed on 14 December 1944, first as a temporary rank, then made permanent 23 March 1946 by an act of the 79th Congress. This was done to have American officers with ranks equivalent to the field marshals of Britain, to reduce friction over who was allowed to give orders to whom. (The acts also created a comparable rank of Fleet Admiral for the Navy.). Following the establishment of the United States Air Force in 1947, the equivalent rank of General of the Air Force was established. The only person to hold the rank of General of the Air Force was Henry Arnold. A General of the Army has the pay grade of O-11. Unsurprisingly, the Generals of the Army are all familiar names: {|\n|       •  \n| George C. Marshall || 16 December 1944\n|-\n|       •  \n| Douglas MacArthur || 18 December 1944\n|-\n|       •  \n| Dwight D. Eisenhower     || 20 December 1944\n|-\n|       •  \n| Henry H. Arnold || 21 December 1944\n|-\n| and\n|-\n|       •  \n| Omar Bradley || 20 September 1950\n|} Note the careful timing of the first four appointments. The dates of rank for the corresponding five-star admiralss are 15, 17, and 19 December 1944, to establish both a clear order of seniority and a near-equivalence between the services. The insignia consists of five stars in a pentagonal pattern, with points touching. The rank still exists today, although nobody has held it since General Bradley died in 1981. In 1976, President Gerald Ford posthumously appointed George Washington as General of the Armies of the United States, and specified that he would always rank first among all officers of the Army, past and present. Category:United States Army\nCategory:Military ranks