Operation Househunt

Most military officers ordered to Washington share the common problem of finding a place to live in the jampacked city. The topmost brass, however, is supposed to be an exception: ranking generals and admirals are provided with comfortable, government-owned quarters, staffed with enlisted servants. But in the postwar star-burst of promotions, even the high command began to develop a housing headache. Last week it turned into a top-level crisis that shook the Pentagon to its highest council chambers and had the nation's foremost military men scurrying around Washington, grabbing houses like kids in a game of musical chairs.

It began back in 1949, when General Omar Bradley was promoted from Army Chief of Staff to the chairmanship of the new Joint Chiefs of Staff, and decided to stay on in his roomy old Quarters "I" at Fort Myer, traditional home of the Army's No. I man. General Joe Collins, coming in as Bradley's successor, had to make do in a commodious brick mansion at Fort McNair. When the new Joint Chiefs were appointed last May, Collins saw trouble ahead. If Admiral Arthur Radford, new boss of the JCS. followed Bradley's precedent and moved into Quarters I, Collins reasoned, then General Matthew Ridgway, Collins' own successor, would probably pre-empt the house at Fort McNair, and Collins would be househunting again.

Close Ranks. Since he is staying on in Washington as Radford's NATO assistant, Collins (who is not called "Lightning Joe" for nothing) reacted fast. He learned that the spacious quarters at Fort Myer, which Air Force General Hoyt Vandenberg had occupied,* were still vacant, and that Van's successor as Air Chief, General Nate Twining, had no plans to move into them. Collins called Ridgway and suggested, with the fervor of a real-estate agent, that the Vandenberg house, with its panoramic view of the city, might be just the thing for him. But Ridgway had his eye on Bradley's Quarters I and wasn't interested. When word of Collins' plot reached him, Twining hastily changed his plans, moved into the Vandenberg house and ordered his deputy, General

Tommy White, to take over his own vacated quarters nearby and close ranks. The crisis spread to the Navy. As the new Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Robert Carney was entitled to live in a huge, turreted barn at the Naval Observatory, next door to the British Embassy, but he nursed a dark suspicion that the higher-ranking Radford might grab it first. To forestall an invasion, Carney leaked a strategic news item to a society columnist, who reported that "Admiral Carney says he expects to move into the admiral's house on Observatory Hill." Ridgway told the same columnist he intended to take over the Bradley house. Having lost the ball, Radford moved in temporarily with his old friend, Marine Commandant Lem Shepherd, at his comfortable Marine Barracks quarters.

Open Space. The problem was bucked to Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, whose practical solution was to rent a suitable place for Radford. But Wilfred McNeil, the defense comptroller, was horrified. The rent was too high, and besides, the Navy would have to employ a staff of civilian servants to replace the retinue of messboys and cooks assigned to a four-star admiral, since the law forbids the employment of military men in private homes rented by the Government.

The Navy thereupon called a top-level meeting to consider the now desperate problem. Admiral D. B. Duncan, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, was asked to yield his house to Radford, but he refused. At a second meeting, outgoing CNO Bill Fechteler recalled that there were two substantial houses at the Naval Gun Factory. The trouble was they were already occupied by the commandant of the Potomac River Command, Rear Admiral Fort, and the gun-factory superintendent, Rear Admiral Hill. Wilson solved this problem by combining the job of Admiral Fort, slated for retirement soon, with that of Admiral Hill. One less admiral meant one more house. Admiral Radford had found a snug harbor at last.

This week, as the new Joint Staff met for the first time, all was serene from Observatory Hill to Quarters I, and Secretary Wilson, 'in his apartment at the Sheraton Park, could turn to other problems of national defense.

* One of three houses which the Army grudgingly relinquished when the Air Force became an independent service. Many Air Force generals are billeted at Boiling Field, on the Maryland side of the Potomac, and ride elegantly to work in the "Air Force Navy," a flotilla of admirals' gigs, operated for their benefit between Boiling and the Pentagon lagoon.

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