Alfred Gruenther

General Alfred Maximilian Gruenther was a senior United States Army officer, Red Cross president, and bridge player. After being commissioned towards the end of World War I, he served in the army throughout the interwar period and into World War II, where he was primarily a staff officer. Several years later, at the age of fifty-two, he became the second youngest four-star general in the history of the United States Army, after only Douglas MacArthur, and succeeded General Matthew Ridgway as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) serving from 1953 to 1956.