Unknown General

President Eisenhower reached under a bushel last week for a new supreme commander of U.S. and U.N. forces in the Far East. To replace General Mark Clark, who is retiring from the Army on Oct. 30, he selected able but little-known four-star General John Edwin Hull, 58.

For Ed Hull, the U.N. command meant an end to years of tough but unglamorous duty at the Pentagon. A graduate of Ohio's Miami University, he started with an infantry commission in 1917, saw combat service in World War I (Silver Star for gallantry), then buckled down to a sucession of staff and training jobs. Modest, loyal, and a bug for detail, he moved to one tough assignment after another: chief of the Army's Operations and Plans Division (1943), boss of the 1948 A-bomb tests at Eniwetok, director of the Defense Department's weapons-evaluation system, Army Vice Chief of Staff. Yet he remained more anonymous than most Washington ghostwriters. "How is it, Ed," a friend once asked him, "that your name is never in the headlines?" "I guess I'm just the general nobody knows," replied Hull.

Said Mrs. Hull as she packed for a trip to Tokyo: "I think my husband will be glad to get away from the Pentagon. He has spent more time there than any man in the Army."

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