Change of Command

One morning this week General Matthew B. Ridgway ceased to be allied proconsul over defeated Japan. By the terms of the peace treaty, the Japanese were a sovereign people again (see below). Three hours later came more news about Matt Ridgway: he would soon be replaced as commander of U.N. forces in Korea. The reason: President Truman had chosen him to succeed General Eisenhower at SHAPE. The change will be effective approximately June 1, the day Ike doffs his uniform to seek the presidency of the U.S.

Fateful Coalition. From a command concerned chiefly with fighting a war and negotiating an elusive peace, 57-year-old General Ridgway will move halfway around the globe to a job concerned chiefly with building military strength to prevent a war. From Eisenhower he inherits an allied military command stretching from Iceland to the Bosporus and encompassing one of history's most fateful coalitions of land, sea & air forces.

The European allies wanted and formally requested an American for Ike's job. The choice fell between two men: Ridgway, and General Alfred Gruenther, No. 2 man in SHAPE under Ike and perhaps the smartest planner in a U.S. military uniform. A superb administrator, a crack bridge player, Gruenther knew NATO's problems and NATO's leaders, who privately hoped he would get the job. But the leaders were happy to accept Ridgway. Gruenther himself had once said he was too introverted for so extroversive a job as supreme commander. In his brilliant 33-year Army career, he has never held a major field command. In the Pentagon and the White House, the nod went to General Ridgway. General Gruenther will stay on in Europe as Ridgway's chief of staff. "I have every confidence," said President Truman, "that Generals Ridgway and Gruenther will make an outstanding team."

Spartan Soldier. In Ridgway NATO got a rugged, spartan soldier who has proved himself a fine field commander. Propelled overnight into command of the U.S. Eighth Army during Korea's darker days, he converted the retreating Eighth into what has been called the finest army ever fielded by the U.S. Truman's firing of Douglas MacArthur thrust Ridgway up suddenly as supreme commander in Japan. In the waning final year of the occupation, he has proved capable of tact and diplomacy (although given to bursts of temper), and has dutifully left most of the big decision making to Washington.

A colonel's son who went inevitably to West Point (class of '17), Ridgway has served peacetime stints in China, Nicaragua, the Panama Canal Zone, the Philippines, Brazil, the Caribbean Command area, and at the United Nations. No stranger to Europe, he led 82nd Airborne paratroopers in World War II and there picked up his familiar hallmark--a grenade hung ready for throwing, on his combat harness. In the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, he served under Britain's Field Marshal Montgomery, who will now be his deputy commander at SHAPE. Monty says he is "delighted" to serve under Ridgway.

To succeed Ridgway as commander of U.N. forces in Korea and of U.S. forces in Japan, President Truman chose General Mark W. Clark, who commanded U.S. forces in Italy in World War II, and more recently has been chief of U.S. Army field forces.

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