Walter Bedell "Beetle" Smith was a senior U.S. Army general who served as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's chief-of-staff at Allied Forces Headquarters during the Tunisia Campaign and the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943. Beginning in the next year, he was General Eisenhower's chief-of-staff at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in Western Europe from 1944 through 1945.
Smith enlisted as a private in the Indiana National Guard in 1911. In 1917, during World War I, he was commissioned as an officer. He was wounded in the Aisne-Marne Offensive in 1918. After World War I, he was a staff officer and instructor at the U.S. Army Infantry School. In 1941, he became Secretary of the General Staff, and in 1942 he became the Secretary to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. His duties involved taking part in discussions of war plans at the highest level, and Smith often briefed President Franklin D. Roosevelt on strategic matters.


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