General Lem

Like any ranking Army officer, General Lyman Louis Lemnitzer, 59, has a soldier's talents for open warfare, but like few he has a diplomat's deft touch for the quiet, unsung victory. Last week President Eisenhower, no mean soldier-diplomat himself, picked General Lemnitzer as the next Army Chief of Staff, to succeed retiring General Maxwell Taylor, 57, next July 1. Lemnitzer was the only new man on the President's list of appointees to the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Air Force's General Nathan Farragut Twining, 61, was reappointed chairman; Chief of Naval

Operations Arleigh ("Thirty-One Knot") Burke, 57, got a third term; General Thomas Dresser White, 57, got a second term as Chief of Air Staff.

Pennsylvania-born Lyman Lemnitzer was spotted by his West Point classmates ('20) as a candidate for stars while his second lieutenant's gold bars were still shiny. After routine duty in the coast artillery in the U.S. and the Philippines, he taught philosophy at West Point in 1934, went on to Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, graduating in 1936. Scholarly, warm, modest, he quickly earned a name for getting things done, and in May 1941 Major Lemnitzer was assigned to the War Department's War Plans Division. He was a brigadier general in September 1942, when he joined General Dwight Eisenhower as assistant chief of staff in charge of planning Operation Torch, the North African invasion.

Subs & Surrenders. As a Torch planner, "General Lem" joined the secret party, led by General Mark Clark, that slipped into North Africa by submarine in 1942, to find French commanders who would defy Vichy and support the forth coming invasion.* Like Clark (who lost his pants while scurrying back to the waiting submarine), Lemnitzer had some close calls: he had to hide in a wine cellar when nosy Vichy French gendarmes came to investigate curious circumstances at the clandestine meeting place; later, en route to Torch headquarters in Gibraltar, his B-17 was attacked by three Nazi JU-88s, which wounded the copilot.

As deputy chief of staff of the 15th Army Group, and commanding general of the U.S. contingent of that international force in Italy, he played a role in the negotiations with Premier Pietro Badoglio that led to Italy's capitulation in 1943. Later, dressed as a civilian (with a dachshund in tow), he managed the Allied discussions in Switzerland that preceded the German High Command's surrender in Italy and Southern Austria.

Uniformed Dulles. Tough jobs came his way even after the war. He helped draft the NATO treaty, helped parcel out arms to U.S. allies as first director of the Office of Military Assistance (1949). As commander of the 11th Airborne Division (1950), he qualified after a week as a rated parachutist (five jumps) at 51. In Korea, Lemnitzer commanded the Seventh Infantry Division, won the Silver Star for gallantry in action, in 1955 took over full command of the United Nations Forces, succeeding Max Taylor, who had gone on to be the Army's Chief of Staff.

In his quiet way, Far East Military Expert Lemnitzer helped build Japan's postwar defense forces, was a key figure in the successful diplomatic byplay that enabled the U.S. to keep strategic Okinawa in the face of growing local opposition. Says one Army general: "What Dulles was in civilian clothes to the Far East, Lemnitzer was in a uniform."

Shirtsleeved Taylor. Max Taylor's vice chief of staff since 1957, Lemnitzer has been philosophically in tune with Taylor, though opposite in personality; he is a messy-desk man and a shirtsleeve worker. But his achievements in that post are monuments to the Army's perseverance in the age of missiles and space. Lemnitzer's chief political victory: staving off an attempt, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to take away the Army's top missileers--Werner von Braun and associates.

Planner Lemnitzer sees eye-to-eye with outgoing Max Taylor, wants a mobile, hard-hitting and lightweight Army, with more airlift and more manpower. Such wants are exceedingly unpopular in the non-Army reaches of the Pentagon. But whether Lemnitzer gets them, military men are already betting he will be a future chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

* Other U.S. officers on the famed secret submarine trip: Colonel (later Brigadier General) Archelaus L. Hamblen, shipping and supply expert; Captain (now Admiral) Jerauld Wright, Navy liaison man on Torch, now commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet; Colonel Julius C. Holmes, head of Torch's Civil Affairs branch, now the Secretary of State's special assistant for NATO. General Clark, retired, is president of The Citadel.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.