THREE TOP SOLDIERS

Key figures in the U.S. military-command changes caused by the appointment of General Maxwell Taylor as U.S. ambassador to Saigon:

General Earle Gilmore Wheeler, 56, new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, moves up from Army Chief of Staff. Wheeler's appointment is another break in the tradition of rotating the Joint Chiefs' chairmanship among the three services. This happened partly by a process of elimination. Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay, 57, is scheduled to retire next February. The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral David McDonald, 57, has been on the job only since last August, is still learning the ropes. That left "Bus" Wheeler for the top service job--which suited Defense Secretary Robert McNamara just fine. Wheeler is McNamara's kind of general--a skilled staff officer who specializes in analytical answers to complex problems.

In his 32 years of service, Wheeler has had only five months' combat duty, as a division chief of staff in Europe in World War II. But in his steady climb as a staffman, he caught the eye of Maxwell Taylor and later of John F. Kennedy, whom he was assigned to brief on military matters in the 1960 campaign. Named Army Chief of Staff in 1962, he set about revitalizing the Army along the lines of Taylor's doctrine of "flexible" response rather than overwhelming reliance on massive nuclear retaliation. During Wheeler's two-year tenure as Chief of Staff, the Army rose from eleven to 16 combat-ready divisions, increased its strength from 870,000 troops to 976,000.

Lieut. General Harold Keith Johnson, 52, new Army Chief of Staff, replaces Wheeler. In selecting him, President Johnson skipped over 43 more senior generals. A slight, sandy-haired man, Johnson was a lieutenant colonel with the 57th Infantry (Philippine Scouts) when the Japanese invaded the islands in 1941. He was captured, endured the infamous Bataan death march, survived three years in Japanese prison camps. In Korea in 1950, he took command of a combat infantry battalion, fought through the bloody defense of the Pusan perimeter and later was named a regimental commander. Back in the U.S., Johnson became commandant of the Army's elite Command and General Staff College. There he coined a slogan, "Challenge the Assertion"--an attitude that has since won him the admiration of Bob Mc Namara, whose hobby is shattering military shibboleths. In 1963 Johnson moved into the Pentagon as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations.

Lieut. General Creighton W. Abrams, 49, new Army Vice Chief of Staff, replaces retiring General Barksdale Hamlett. From the moment the 37th tank battalion, which he commanded, rolled into action in Normandy in July 1944, "Abe" Abrams showed the feel and flair of a born combat man. Leading the sweep of General George Patton's Third Army across Europe, he would lean from his Sherman tank, chomping on a huge cigar, and rally his tankers with his war cry: "Attack! Attack! Attack!" Said Abrams: "I like to get out on the point where there's nothing but me and the goddam Germans and we can fight by ourselves." When the 101st Airborne was surrounded at the Battle of the Bulge, Abrams led the relief column into Bastogne, later led the dash to the Rhine.

After the" war, to the surprise of many, Abrams became a fine staff officer, rewrote a book on armored tactics and served as a corps chief of staff in Korea. In 1961, when Soviet pressures on Berlin brought the cold war near the boiling point, Abrams commanded the U.S.'s key 3rd Armored Division in West Germany. In 1962 Abrams returned to the U.S. as Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations for Civil Affairs. The title sounded ho-hum, but the job was far from that. When race riots broke out on the Ole Miss cam pus in Oxford that fall, Abrams sped to take command of the troops that had been alerted there. He did the same in the bloody Birmingham riots of May 1963, in constant contact with the Army war room and Justice Department command headquarters.

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