Note from Jim: Who Is Gen. George Olmsted?

Who is the Gen. Olmsted that Bill Still referred to in his post this morning while praising General Flynn?

"General Olmsted was a U.S. Military Academy graduate who retired three times from the Army but was recalled for service in World War II and the Korean War.

General Olmsted was modest about his business achievements, asserting that the success of his enterprises was a matter of "finding competent management, giving them a free rein and then supporting them through thick and thin." The credit, he said, "belongs to the men who conduct the operations. I have sense enough not to interfere with them."

However, observers of General Olmsted's career noted that he was enterprising even during his military career. His effort to rescue 30,000 prisoners of war held by the Japanese in camps throughout Asia at the end of World War II was of particular note.

As General Olmsted later told the story, shortly before the Japanese surrender, the military got word that a Japanese collapse was imminent and that the prisoners had to be rescued immediately to save them from possible harm. "We didn't have the troops to send in," General Olmsted said. "If we had, we didn't have the planes to carry them or the means of supplying them." When he laid out his rescue scheme to his superior, General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer responded: "That's the craziest scheme I have ever heard in the Army. Try it. If it fails, remember we are readying court-martial charges against you."

General Olmsted first ordered leaflets dropped. Then he sent a single airplane carrying six unarmed men to parachute into each camp with a letter to the camp commander, signed by Wedemeyer. It said the Allies knew the number of prisoners in each camp and would hold the camp commander responsible if harm came to any prisoner. "It worked," he said later. "But I had some sleepless days and nights."

Source: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/golmsted.htm