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Contact Info
Home Town Austin, Texas
Last Address Alexandria, Virginia
Date of Passing Oct 10, 2000
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
United States Army General. His father was United States Army Brigadier General Bruce Palmer Sr., and his grandfather, Major George Henry Palmer, received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery during the Civil War. He graduated sixth in his class from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1936, and served in the Southwest Pacific Theater during World War II. After the war, he became a tactics instructor in the infantry school at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was a 1952 graduate of the Army War College and was its deputy commandant from 1959 to 1961. He became deputy commanding general to General William C. Westmoreland in Vietnam in 1967 and United States Army vice chief of staff, again under Westmoreland, in 1968. General Palmer was the Army's acting chief of staff in 1972 and retired in 1974 as Commander in Chief of the Army Readiness Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. His other assignments included a tour as White House liaison officer to the Army's chief of staff and deputy chief of staff. After retiring from active duty, he served two years as executive director of the Defense Manpower Commission. From 1976 to 1984, he was a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a military member of the Central Intelligence Agency's military review panel and the agency's Center for the Study of Intelligence. His decorations included five Army Distinguished Service Medals, an Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, a Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star and Air Medal. He also held the director of central intelligence's National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal.
STRICOM was redesignated United States Readiness Command (REDCOM) in 1972. Essentially, the change was nothing more than a redesignation, except that the command was divested of its MEAFSA responsibilities. The redesignated command's missions included integrating, training, and providing CONUS-based general purpose forces, as well as planning and providing joint task force headquarters and forces for operations in areas not assigned to other unified commands. In 1979, the national command authorities ordered the CINC of REDCOM (CINCRED) to establish the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) headquarters as a separate subordinate command within REDCOM. That same year, General Volney F. Warner took command of REDCOM, and held command until 1981. The Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force became an independent unified command in 1983 as United States Central Command (USCENTCOM). Readiness Command was replaced by United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) in 1987, with the last CINCRED, General James J. Lindsay, becoming the first CINCSOC.
