World Battlefronts: Three to Make Ready

At a time when every Russian private could join with Adolf Hitler in yearning for news about the when & how of a second front, all that came out of Britain last week were portentous hints of great things afoot:

> British censors passed news stories of tremendous landing-party exercises by Canadian troops on the coast of Britain with A.E.F. lieutenants and sergeants joining for experience in invasion tactics.

> Dwight David Eisenhower, newly appointed commander of the U.S. forces in the European theater, was promoted from major general to lieutenant general.

> The U.S. Army Air Forces revealed the name of their European theater commander. He is wiry, weatherbeaten Major General Carl Spaatz (TIME, Feb. 9), a military flyer since the year after he was graduated from West Point (1914). “Tooey”* Spaatz (rhymes with Swatz) won the D.S.C. for knocking down three German planes in World War I, the D.F.C. for commanding the Question Mark in the Army’s famed refueling flight (6 days, 6 hrs.) in 1929.

> Commander of the Bomber Command, under General Spaatz, is husky, 46-year-old Brigadier General Ira Eaker (rhymes with baker), one of the Question Mark’s pilots, first pilot to fly on instruments across the continent.

* Corruption of Toohey, an upperclassman at West Point, whom he resembled.