Forces on the Ground
(See Cover)
From a pine-covered knoll near Hof (pop. 60,000) in central Germany, five G.I.s of Bravo Company. 2nd U.S. Armored Cavalry, last week stood watchful guard on a section of the Iron Curtain. Staff Sergeant William S. Nolen Jr.. 21. of Mt. Holly. N.C.. in charge of this pinpoint on 500 miles of West German frontier, had his .30-cal. machine guns dug in. his field telephone ready at hand. Beyond the barbed wire and strip of plowed land that marked the border lay the peaceful green hills of East Germany's Thuringia--and as close as 20 miles beyond that, as Sergeant Nolen knew, lay outposts of an elite, nuclear-armed Soviet army group of 20 to 25 divisions and more than 5.000 modern tanks. Nolen's key weapon was his telephone: 30 minutes after his warning, five crack U.S. divisions (3rd and 4th Armored, 3rd, 8th. 24th Infantry) would be on their way to prepared combat positions, backed up by nuclear-armed missiles and planes.
Sergeant Nolen squinted through his spotterscope at two Communist observation towers on the opposite side, talked to a TIME correspondent about the 19 East Germans who recently escaped into his sector. "Gives me the creeps, this place." muttered one of Nolen's men. "What a helluva life it must be on the other side."
"To Protect People." Thus last week was the close-in "engagement" of U.S. forces keeping the peace, as it had for a dozen years (while some pundits talked as though peace could come only by disengagement). Thus also was the rifle-toting U.S. Army, frequently the stepchild among the military headline-getters, spotlighted as it continued its patrol of the Communist land frontiers against the backdrop of the Berlin crisis.
In Washington one of the Army's most persuasive and respected generals took the occasion of Berlin to spell out for the Senate Armed Services Committee his modern version of an old Army land doctrine. "To protect people on this earth you need to hold the land with forces on the ground." said General Lyman Louis Lemnitzer. the Army's Vice Chief of Staff last fortnight. "The addition of nuclear or thermonuclear types of weapons does not in any way replace the requirements for good manpower." The Senators listened with close attention, later confirmed President Eisenhower's appointment of General Lemnitzer to the Army Chief of Staff's job, to succeed General Maxwell Taylor July 1.
"Who's He?" Heavy-set (5 ft. 11 in.. 190 Ibs.). "Lem" Lemnitzer. 59, son of a Pennsylvania shoemaker, has spent his 39 years since West Point getting jobs done and going away before anybody noticed he was there. Never the dramatic sort to pack pistols like Patton or a hand grenade like Ridgway, he was the workhorse officer who planned Allied landings in North Africa in 1942, negotiated the German surrender in Italy in 1945, organized Defense Department's NATO rearmament program (1948-50), commanded U.N. forces in the Far East (1955-57), was marked for the top job years ago. Yet his name was always widely met with a standard response: "Who's he?"
He is heir to one of the sternest military jobs the U.S. has to offer. If he is to "protect people on this earth." he must clear up the Army's own confusion on the earthy mission it alone can play in the land-sea-air defenses of the U.S. He must define the shape, size and equipment necessary for the West's ground defense in an age when military science is being shaken to its Clausewitz underpinnings by accelerating changes in weaponry and warfare. And. working with the quiet efficiency that is his habit, he must bring these forces into being at frontier points where Soviet-bloc adventurousness--encouraged by overwhelming numbers and presently superior ground weaponry--might set off the world's nuclear stockpiles.
Arms & Men. Lemnitzer will inherit what Max Taylor calls a "lean and mean" Army of 889,000 enlisted men and officers stationed around the world (40% overseas) in a bewildering variety of jobs and outfits. Among them: seven combat divisions in central Europe, two in Korea-overlooking the two ends of the Soviet empire; three Strategic Army Corps (STRAC) divisions U.S.-based for airlift to brushfire war anywhere (but dangerously ineffective, the Army feels, because the Air Force provides too few troop transports); 62 Nike missile battalions (15 nuclear-nosed Nike-Hercules batteries) around U.S. cities; 5,000 Army members of Military Assistance Advisory Groups (MAAG) in 45 nations from Britain to Viet Nam. Sharp in new Army Green ("A.G.s") uniforms that set them off from their O.D.-clad allies, they make up the best big Army the U.S. ever allowed itself when not at open war.
Lemnitzer will also inherit the problems caused by one of the strangest episodes in the Army's long history: the Army's ill-starred attempt to leap beyond its earthbound mission and become a guardian of strategic missile warfare. Long on ballistics, the artillery-conscious Army early realized the vast possibilities of the V-2 missiles developed by the Germans at the Peenemuende rocket base. At World War II's end, the Army hustled V-2 Developer Wernher von Braun (TIME Cover, Feb. 17, 1958) and 120 other key German scientists to the U.S., put them to work.
But when in 1955 the intercontinental missile was awarded to the Air Force as part of its strategic deterrent role, the Army poured far too much of its brightest energy and money into a bureaucratic war in defense of its strategic missile program. Brigadier General Lyal Metheny's "inner general staff" of roles-and-missions thinkers started a skirmish with the Air Force that became the headlined 1956 "Revolt of the Colonels." Nothing more plainly measured the intense concern inside the Army than the number of brilliant soldiers who left it and turned around for angry sniping at policies they had "lived with.'' Among them: former Eighth Army Commander James Van Fleet, former Chief of Staff Matthew B. Ridgway, former Research Chief Lieut. General James M. (War and Peace in the Space Age) Gavin. Next up: Maxwell Taylor, who is already working on the criticism he will publish of current defense policy.
Back to Earth. The passion for missilery has brought the Army the U.S.'s best arsenal of operational tactical missiles (Redstone, Corporal, Honest John, Nike, etc.), and the Huntsville Arsenal's intermediate-range Jupiter turned out to be the first U.S. missile to launch a satellite in the embarrassing days after Sputnik I. But the high cost of shooting minds and money on Big Space worried Army thinkers who were certain that hard ground-war planning and weaponry had been neglected in the process. The Army has yet to replace the heavy, obsolete M-1 rifle with the officially approved, fast-firing M-14, to replace the World War I .30-cal. machine gun with the new M60, or to come up with a tank to match the Russian T-54 now in the field. "For $5 billion worth of troop equipment," cracked one division commander last month, "I'd trade Huntsville away in a minute."
Through this spark-charged atmosphere,
Lem Lemnitzer moved like a nonconductor. In December he smoothly headed off a drive by the new civilian space agency (NASA) to take over Huntsville, but he promised to serve any NASA needs. His own strongest efforts had long since been thrown behind development of more earthy necessities, e.g., a mortar-spotting radar in 1953, a plastic grenade launcher this year. His steady emphasis on combat readiness as top priority promises to scale the Army's space push down to manageable proportions. In word and deed he seemed just the steady old pro the Army needed to get back on solid ground and carry on from there.
Rodeo's Home. Second of three sons of a patient, pious couple of German-Lutheran descent. Lyman Lemnitzer was born Aug. 29, 1899, in Honesdale, Pa. (pop. 6,000). Thrifty father William worked up in 53 years at the local shoemaking plant from odd-job boy to vice-president, built a fortresslike house on the right bank of the Lackawaxen River (one small bridge later named after Lyman). Poorer kids ate butter, but the Lemnitzer boys got their bread dry or lard smeared. They dutifully did their chores (dishwashing, lawn mowing), earned their spending money at part-time jobs. Lyman clerked at Mike Bergstein's Main Street store, developed an Army-useful talent for shortening pants.
The disciplined life had its lighter moments. Lyman, the daring one, taught younger brother Ernest (now with a building-construction firm in Hackensack, N.J.) how to swim, shook the town each July 4 with blasts from his is-inch-long toy cannon, set off a homemade bomb in the stone quarry, practiced his rifle marksmanship (he later became one of the Army's best) in the attic on rainy days with a .22. One winter, while crust riding downhill on his sled, he lost control, rammed head first into a stone wall. Unshaken, he would have gone calmly back up for another slide had not friends persuaded him to go to the doctor--who took six stitches to close the gap. Thenceforth.
Lyman suffered in silence the nickname "Rocko." (WELCOME HOME, ROCKO, read 1945 Honesdale banners.) Growing up, Lem learned golf, polished it into his present long-drive, low-80s game (one back-home partner on Honesdale's nine-hole course: Art Wall, 1959 Masters champion).
The Clean Sleeve. A slight, hollow-eyed boy, he heeded the advice of older brother Coe (who died in 1917), managed to win an appointment to West Point. Two Honesdale teachers helped him cram for six weeks to get a head start, but the Point was like hitting another stone wall. Blunt-spoken upperclassmen advised him to give up, and it soon became apparent that he would always be a "clean-sleeve" cadet, without visible marks for leadership, scholarship or athletics. Once he made the baseball team wearing the catcher's "tools of ignorance," but that ended when he tore a ligament sliding into base. He graduated 86th out of 271 in the class of 1920. Among his classmates: longtime Army Coach Earl Blaik; Thomas D. White, now Air Force Chief of Staff; Lieut. General Francis W. Farrell, now Seventh Army Commander in Germany; and General Henry Hodes. U.S. Army Commander in Chief in Europe 1956-59-Second Lieut. Lemnitzer married Honesdale's dark-eyed Katherine Tryon just before he was assigned to the first of his two tours (1924-25, 1931-34) with the Coast Artillery batteries on Corregidor. Their honeymoon cruise was made aboard a troopship so crowded that husbands and wives had to travel segregated in five-passenger cabins.
Mystery in the Den. In the years that followed, Lemnitzer settled purposefully into the orderly routine of the peacetime Army, started early his habit of retiring behind his "bear's den" door at night to read newspapers, magazines, technical journals ("I don't know," says wife Kay, "whether he goes in there to work, or read, or snooze"). He became the formidable but revered "Pop" to their two children: son William, now an Army captain and assistant professor of chemistry at West Point, and daughter Lois, wife of Artillery Lieut. Henry E. Simpson at Fort Sill, Okla. He rose fast to brigadier general, took the 34th Antiaircraft Artillery Brigade to England in 1942.
When war came studious, hard-working Lyman Lemnitzer was a major who had taken fullest advantage of the educational system by which the Army developed its peacetime professional officer corps to an astonishing level of efficiency. He had taught physics and allied subjects at West Point, was a graduate of the Command and General Staff School and the Army War College, and was accounted one of the Army's finest staff officers.
Chill in the Woods. Joint air-sea-land operations in coordination with Allies were to become standard operating procedure in World War II, but when the Allies landed on North Africa ("Operation Torch") in November 1942, the idea was a formidable novelty to planners. Lemnitzer drew up the plans for Torch. As Supreme Commander Eisenhower's Assistant Chief of Staff (G-3), he showed such a gift for working out the tactical obstacles and logistic snarls of joint operations that he became a sort of permanent, rotating staff officer, got little chance to command his own unit.
But he saw some lively action anyway. As the man with the plans, he went with General Mark Clark on the famous Oct. 22 pre-invasion submarine landing upon the French North African coast. Objective: to meet key French leaders at a villa, persuade them not to fight Torch forces. But Vichy police got a tip, came in force to search the meeting place. Lemnitzer was only half dressed when a British commando escort swept through the house picking up all traces of their visit --including Lemnitzer's pants. In his B.V.D.s Lemnitzer leaped out a window just ahead of the police, ran to a nearby woods, lay shivering on the ground. He finally made it back aboard the waiting submarine in a big, highly visible white sweater--only to find Mark Clark freshly outfitted in the Lemnitzer pants.
A few days later, flying with General Jimmy Doolittle and other brass to Torch's headquarters at Gibraltar, Lem manned their B-17's radio compartment gun, shot down one of four attacking German Ju-88s. Finally, he got back to command his 34th Ack-Ack long enough for a few strafings by the then-superior Luftwaffe. But always jobs aplenty called for a workhorse staffman. He handled Seventh Army's embarkation for Sicily, was promptly called to be Deputy Chief of Staff for British Field-Marshal Sir Harold Alexander's Fifteenth Army Group. He rose to major general and staff chief for the Mediterranean Theater without taking up much of anybody's newsprint.
His lifelong habit of low visibility became his biggest asset when he turned up in Switzerland with Allen Dulles and a British major general in a cloak-and-dagger operation, headed the talks with German generals who surrendered their forces in Italy, a few days before V-E day.
Milestones. Lyman Lemnitzer, clean-sleeve cadet who grew up to be a studious, smart and consistently calm officer, proved in history's biggest war to have a rare capacity for diplomacy in his worldwide soldiering. From then on he made events more often than he watched them, and his work of the past 14 years is marked by milestones he set as the U.S. moved to its present defense posture. Efficiently, he:
P:Explored, as Armyman on the Joint Strategic Survey Committee (1946-47), the implications of atomic arms on future war.
P:Surveyed, in 1948, the defense needs of Western Europe's war-ravaged nations, helped herd through Congress the U.S.'s Mutual Defense Assistance Program (companion to the Marshall Plan), set up the first allocation of military material.
P:Sought, when Korea broke out (1950), a division command, got it (11th Airborne, Fort Campbell, Ky.) from Chief of Staff J. Lawton Collins. This command, generally recognized as part of his final grooming for staff chief, carried only one condition: 51-year-old Major General Lemnitzer had first to go through the muscle-rending jump school at Fort Benning, Ga. He did.
P:Earned, under artillery fire (1952),while commanding 7th Infantry Division in Korea, his expected general's Silver Star (among other medals on his nine-ribbon row: Commander of the British Empire, Distinguished Service Medal).
P:Froze design, started production of the Army's now-in-use, first-generation missiles when, as the Army's Plans and Research Chief (1952-55), he hit the roles and missions crisis at its peak.
P:Commanded Eighth Army (1955) and U.N. forces (1955-57) in the delicate cease-fire period when the U.S. nursed its local allies (South Korea, Japan, Nationalist China) into shape to carry more of their own defense load. Specifics: he put down South Korean riots against U.S. troops (provocation: the U.S. agreed to Communist truce supervisors), spearheaded the Defense Department's successful efforts to solve the land crisis which threatened permanent political unrest on Okinawa, the U.S.'s main Far East defense position.
P:Pushed steadily toward combat readiness when, as Max Taylor's Vice Chief (1957-59), he got a running start into his own term.
Revolutionary War. Soldiers everywhere know that the Army that Lem Lemnitzer will take over has already plunged into a period of basic changes. "It's a damned revolution,'' said a head-shaking first sergeant on San Francisco's Angel Island. Samples of the revolution: MISSILES IN THE SUBURBS
At Battery A, 45th Antiaircraft Artillery Brigade, near suburban Arlington Heights, Ill. last week, blackbooted soldiers in fresh-starched fatigues worked over radar screens and Nike missile launch gear. Amidst the familiar incense of hot electronic equipment they chanted their trade litany as they practiced tracking on unsuspecting airliners: "Interlock held. Interlock cheated . . . Line volts O.K. . . . Three-quarters, three-quarters . . ."
It was no place for sad sacks or boneheads. Only two of Battery A's 129 men had less than eighth-grade education; 91 had finished high school and nine college; and most had volunteered for missilery to get technical schooling.
Eyeing the inverted chevrons of the Army's new technician class. First Sergeant Leonard T. Berry deplored the Army's changes over his 19 years. "If I try to get 50 guys to parade, I can't do it." he growled. "They think all they have to do is out there in the pits." Old Soldier Berry still insists on the traditional Friday night "G.I. Party" if the battery's comfortable barracks looks unscrubbed. Suspiciously, he watches such innovations as midmorning (9:30-10) coffee breaks, midafternoon Coke breaks, mechanical potato peelers, dishwashers. EDUCATION IN THE RANKS
Space-age hardware like Nike drove the Army into a search for skilled manpower. In "Operation Meathead" (1957-59), the Army discharged 75,000 untrainables, as a byproduct cut stockade (prison) population from 6,300 to 1,500. slashed its overall courts-martial rate 22%. Its multimillion-dollar education program in 1957-58 qualified 40,000 enlisted men for high-school diplomas, by 1962 will put 1,200 in colleges. Half of the Army officers who do not have college degrees have signed up for courses. RANGERS FOR TOUGHNESS
The Army's Ranger course at Fort Benning, Ga. has spread through all branches some 4,600 elite young officers and NCOs who know from bitter training experience what it takes to fight with a fast-moving battle group in the toughest campaigns.
Sample: about dawn one day last month 47 newly commissioned West Point second lieutenants streamed into the Ranger school dugout on a mountain near Dahlonega in the rugged forest of North Georgia. For 72 hours they had dodged and fought blank-firing Aggressor troops (Russian-like insignia and uniforms) across 50 miles of tangled underbrush. By map and compass they traveled at night, kept on alert all day (about two hours' sleep each), set off live explosive near TVA's Blue Ridge Dam. For food they had one C-ration can, a share in a live chicken. (New problem for the city-bred: how to kill and cook it.) They had learned in earlier problems to live on snake meat in Florida's Everglades, cross open country on a run (about five miles every 40 minutes). Sent to tactical units, the Rangers are under orders to set up five-week courses of similar toughness throughout the Army, will soon introduce a new standard physical-fitness test for basic trainees. ARMY AT THE READY
The Seventh Army in West Germany, effective instrument of close-in engagement, works at the diverse, contradictory problems of cold-war alertness in the nuclear age. The Seventh has to be ready, perhaps for years to come, for instant attack from the nuclear-armed U.S.S.R. land and air forces poised across the border. It offers enemy nuclear missiles no good targets, encamps no unit bigger than a battalion in a single area. Senior officers roam distant outposts to make unannounced tests of how fast and accurately the outposts could report a Russian tank attack to Army headquarters.
Also constantly tested Army-wide, often at 3 or 4 a.m.: how fast each unit can be combat loaded and on the road toward prepared battle positions. Minimum requirements for each unit's mobilization of manpower: 50% strength in 30 minutes, 35% more in two hours, no more than 15% on leave at once. Yet in their drills the battle-ready battalions never roll all the way to their carefully prepared positions. Reason: in the age of tactical missiles, battle positions are secret; the Seventh wants no fixed Russian missiles zeroed in on battle targets.
Working on the grim, untried tactics of nuclear battle, the Seventh has adopted the "shield and spear" principle. Its five-division conventional weaponry would be a shield to stop the first assault, force the Russians to concentrate in attack forces big enough to be devastated by the Seventh's nuclear "spear." The spear is made up of half a dozen Corporal ballistic-missile battalions (100-mile range), Honest Johns, Redstones, 280-mm. cannon, 8-in. howitzers--together capable of delivering at least 100 atomic warheads simultaneously.
Anti-Nibble Role. The Berlin crisis focused attention on the U.S. Army at work--and made clear the urgency of a convincing definition of the Army's mission in the crises that are bound to lie ahead. Gone is the day when the U.S. needs a massive Army to match the enemy's massive Army, for an all-out struggle would soon bring tactical nuclear air-power into play, ultimately the Strategic Air Command and carrier strike forces. But gone also is the day when airpower theorists can write off the Army as mere "trip wire" or "plate glass" to sound the general alarm for all-out nuclear war.
As the Russians increase their intercontinental missile strength they are bound to exploit the West's increasing reluctance to start ICBM war over small nibblings at other Berlins. The Army will be more and more needed as a highly flexible, fast-moving force, armed to deal decisively with nibbling tactics. Principal role of limited deterrence: make limited objectives too expensive for an enemy to contemplate unless he clearly wants to push to big war.
"The first purpose of the military strength which the United States maintains is to prevent war," says General Lemnitzer. "If our efforts to deter war are to be effective, they must provide means to counter military aggression successfully whether it takes either a limited or an unlimited form." In finding the proper place for the Army in that formula--and in designing and equipping the Army to fill it--Lyman Lemnitzer will face the biggest job and greatest opportunity of his years of effective diplomatic soldiering.
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