K.P.'s Hero

The Army's first Distinguished Service Medal in the European Theater of Operations last week went to gruff and crusty Brigadier General Robert McGowan Littlejohn, ETO's chief quartermaster. Said the citation for the highest noncombat award: "marked aggressiveness . . . which met and solved many unexpected and seemingly unsurmountable problems of supply [including those of] the African Task Force."

As clothing boss of the Quartermaster General's Staff in Washington in 1940, when official plans concerned less than a million men, Robert Littlejohn privately planned and organized for twice that number. Sent to Britain a year ago, he pumped reverse Lend-Lease to get 40% of his supplies from the British. Littlejohn's anti-waste campaign has cut shipping space 12% without reducing rations. All the food and clothing for General Eisenhower's forces were his responsibility.

But to K.P.s there is a single, better reason for the award: waste-hating Quartermaster Littlejohn abolished the peeling of potatoes.

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