STRIKE

War began at 3:30 a.m. Invading Gutasun troops hauled themselves by rope across the river separating them from democratic Renloa, a U.S. ally. At dawn, a Gutasun fighter plane knocked out the defenses of a nearby airfield with a tactical nuclear bomb, and 1,200 Gutasun paratroopers drifted out of the sky to capture the runways. Within hours of the Gutasun invasion, U.S. aircraft, paratroopers and G.I.s were speeding to Renloa's aid.

The Renloan war was of course a show. It was enacted in a swampy, gnat-infested, 3 1/2-million acre slice of North and South Carolina. Some 70,000 U.S. soldiers and flyers played the parts of the invaders and the defenders. But it was also a deadly serious show--the biggest U.S. peacetime maneuvers since bewildered draftees, carrying wooden machine guns, sludged through the Louisiana boondocks in 1941. And the exercise was the first major test of a new U.S. fighting force: STRIKE Command. (The Russians were also conducting some imaginative war games of their own--see THE WORLD).

Less than a year ago, STRIKE Command was nothing more than a concept. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, busily beefing up the armed forces' ability to fight brushfire or conventional wars, decided that the U.S. needed a force that could instantly be deployed anywhere around the world. The basic requirement for such a force was the closest sort of air cooperation.

From a Cold Start. But McNamara soon discovered that there was little coordination between the three Army divisions in the U.S. and the fighter and transport units of the Air Force's Tactical Air Command. McNamara's solution was to merge the three divisions and all Stateside units of TAG into a unified command that became known as STRIKE. To command STRIKE, McNamara picked the Army's General Paul D. Adams, 55, a let-the-chips-fall combat veteran of World War II, Korea, and a leader of the hastily assembled U.S. police force sent to Lebanon in 1958.

By picking up the white telephone in his Tampa headquarters and ordering surprise alerts at all hours of the day and night, Adams has turned STRIKE into a fighting unit braced for a sprinter's start. "In one night, we can pick up a force of three or four fighter squadrons, six to eight reconnaissance planes, and an Army-reinforced battle group and have them on their way," says Adams. "If we really wanted to break our necks, the first troops could be in the air within two hours from a cold start."

To find out more about STRIKE'S combat readiness, Adams ordered the Carolina maneuvers, dubbed "Operation Swift Strike II.'' F-100 fighters roared low over the peanut and beanfields in close support of sweltering G.I.s armed with new M-14 rifles and M-60 machine guns. C124 cargo planes lumbered overhead to airdrop Jeeps to the troops below. During one exhausting night, 194 huge cargo planes of the Military Air Transport Service flew in 8,000 men of the 5th Mechanized Infantry Division and 6,000 tons of equipment from Fort Carson, Colo., 1,800 miles away.

Like the Real Thing. The maneuvers seemed almost as confusing as actual combat. At one point, the observing party headed by Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay had trouble even finding the fighting. A convoy of 59 trucks got lost on the Carolina roads. Guerrilla operations were carried out with startling realism. Several weeks ago, the guerrillas infiltrated the Carolina countryside, secured hideouts, persuaded civilians to act as sympathizers who would provide food, medical aid and other services. When the maneuvers began, more guerrillas parachuted into their areas, were greeted by civilian doctors that had been "won over." The Renloa guerrillas scored a coup by calmly driving a truck up to a Gutasun preflight briefing and driving off with several astounded F-100 pilots.

Adams, who seemed to be everywhere on the battlefield, made a point of eating supper one night in the field with a bearded guerrilla unit wearing tattered civilian clothes. The menu: catfish stew and fried water moccasin. "You keeping clean?" Adams asked one guerrilla. "Yes, sir," was the reply. "We wash our socks and underclothes every day. It doesn't get them clean, but it keeps the smell out." "That's important," said the general with approval. "Always keep the clothes next to your body clean. When you're moving fast, that's what slows you down-rash and chafe."

Adams then began to talk to the soldier about what he would do if he were spotted. The soldier's guerrilla leader broke in: "My men don't get out where they can be spotted. They're killers." That seemed to satisfy the man charged with the responsibility of whipping STRIKE into shape to put out, if necessary, a flaring brushfire war in some neglected corner of the world.

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