Pattern's Peer

During a speech in Nashville last month, Lyndon Johnson promised to send to Viet Nam more topflight military leaders, "the best that this country has been able to produce." Delivering on that pledge the President last week announced the assignment to Saigon of General Creighton Abrams Jr., a World War II hero who is rated the ruggedest combat commander in the U.S. Army. He will become No. 2 man to General William Westmoreland, commander of all U.S. forces in South Viet Nam.

Abe Abrams, 52, has been Army Vice Chief of Staff since September 4, 1964, the day he pinned on his fourth star. He will take over from Lieut. General John A. Heintges, who has been named Deputy U.S. Army Commander in Europe. The appointment of a full general to replace a lieutenant general underscores speculation that Abrams will ultimately succeed Westmoreland. Abrams, who has just returned from his third inspection tour of the war zone, considers the present U.S. force level (435,000) in Viet Nam "about right."

Fightin'est Footballer. Abrams' assignment engendered a mixture of awe and anticipation among military and civilian officials in Saigon. The son of a railroad hand, he was born in Springfield, Mass. At West Point, where he was known as the "fightin'est man" on the football squad, he claims that his only distinction was an aversion to discipline. After cavalry training at Fort Bliss, Texas, Abrams joined the 4th Armored Division at its formation in 1941, stayed with it through the war.

As commander of the 37th Tank Battalion, Abrams rode point in the race from Normandy to the Rhine in a string of command tanks--each of which he named Thunderbolt. He spearheaded the column that relieved the encircled 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Often cut off himself, the cigar-chomping tanker once said: "They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards." Abrams' embrace of battle earned him the unqualified admiration of his fiery Third Army Commander, George Patton: "I'm supposed to be the best tank commander in the Army, but I have one peer--Abe Abrams."

Firepower & Mass Attack. After World War II, Abrams made a smooth transition to staff officer, attended Command and General Staff College and the Army War College, rewrote a book on armored tactics, then served as a corps chief in Korea. In 1960, after a series of U.S. staff assignments, he was given command of the 3rd Armored Division in West Germany--in time for the Berlin crisis of 1961. Next year Abrams returned to the U.S. as Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations for Civil Affairs, and had the unlikely task of quelling riots at Birmingham and the University of Mississippi.

An advocate of overwhelming firepower and the shock value of mass attack, Abrams will take to the battle an unalloyed respect for the men he will soon command. After his most recent slog through the boonies of South Viet Nam, he said: "You can't go out there and talk with the soldiers and officers without coming away inspired."

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