COMMAND: Sic ‘Em, Ned

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One day last June, when the North Koreans were pouring down from the 38th parallel, Douglas MacArthur’s hard-pressed Chief of Staff rammed through a phone call from Tokyo to Seoul.

Major General Edward Mallory Almond was impatient to hear the latest battlefront news from U.S. military adviser Colonel Sterling Wright. A near-hysterical Korean operator broke into the call. “Oh, save us, save us, General Almond,” she wailed. Tart-tongued in moments of exasperation, the Chief of Staff answered: “What in the hell do you think we’re trying to do? Whose planes do you think were flying over Seoul today?”

Under MacArthur, few commanders played a more important role than “Ned” Almond in saving Korea from Red aggression. The war was hardly a fortnight old and the U.N. forces were still beating a dismal retreat, when the Chief of Staff was told to start thinking of an end run around the enemy’s line. Inchon was picked as the place for an amphibious assault, despite its treacherous tide and seawall. “Who’s going to command the landing force?” asked the Chief of Staff. “You are,” said MacArthur.

Military handbooks allow 160 days for readying a landing of such magnitude. Beginning Aug. 16th, Almond drafted the plans for the Inchon landing by the 28th, had his X Corps (the U.S. 1st Marine and 7th Infantry Divisions plus South Korean units) on the sea and moving to the target by Sept. 10, went ashore on the 15th, secured the Inchon-Seoul-Kimpo area and completed his mission by October 7th—two weeks ahead of schedule and a total of 53 days from start to finish of brilliantly executed Operation Chromite.

Battle Ready. Last week U.N. forces in Korea were smashing ahead (see above) toward their next objective: a quick finish to the war.

In ordinary fatigue uniform and cap, with a .38-caliber revolver at his side and an old leather map case under his arm, trim, greying General Almond spent the first few days of the week making the rounds of his troops. He inspected the marines in their staging area, chatted with a hundred leathernecks (“What’s your name? Where’s your home? How long have you been in the service?”), found one who didn’t know his rifle number and chided him (it’s a military notion that a soldier who knows his rifle number will treat the weapon as a friend and never cast it aside).

He paid homage at a hillside cemetery where lie Americans and Koreans killed in the Inchon campaign. He was host at a dinner for Marine regimental commanders, giving weatherbeaten Colonel Lewis (“Chesty”) Puller of the 1st Marine Regiment the place of honor. On the Inchon waterfront Almond saw tanks loaded aboard LSTs. He flew in a Piper Cub 200 miles south to inspect the 7th Infantry Division in another staging area; he watched the doughfeet, stripped to the waist in the warm South Korean sun, maneuver through combat exercises in paddy fields and up hillsides.

The 7th Division was recently reinforced by 8,000 South Koreans. In a 100-mile tour of the 7th’s area, Almond asked one officer after another how the Korean troops were getting along in their training. All told him of difficulties arising from the language barrier. Said one colonel: “We may have to rewrite our own training program after teaching the Roks. I am convinced that we have devoted too much time to lectures and too little time to demonstrations. With the Roks, it’s no use to talk. You just have to show them over & over; finally they catch on.”

After looking over the 7th, Ned Almond flew back to Inchon. His men were ready to play their part in the drive for a quick finish.

Whip-Cracker. Almond (pronounced All-mond) is a whip-cracking officer. He never compromises with discipline, drives himself hard and his subordinates only a shade less hard. To some he seems an insufferable martinet. Those who know him best say his professional manner, at times as tough as armor plate, is only the protective covering for a courtly, convivial, even sentimental off-duty personality.

During the Inchon campaign, Almond toured his front lines indefatigably. As early as 4 a.m., he would leave his 2½-ton trailer CP (equipped with refrigerator and alfresco shower) to drive his own jeep to some jumping-off point. He got to know by name every X Corps battalion commander, talked to several score men in the ranks daily. One G.I. gave him this passing mark: “The soldiers here may not like him, but they sure as hell admire him. That’s one general who sticks his neck out just like we have to.”

Every general has his pet dicta. One of Almond’s favorites is “no tanks to the rear,” a logical sequence of his conviction that a soldier must use every weapon he has to the uttermost to kill the foe and save his own skin. “The place of the tank,” he explains, “is at the front destroying the enemy. If it goes back, even though for gasoline, we lose two things: firepower and the morale of the foot soldier. The foot soldier moving up can well ask himself, ‘What the hell?’ if a tank passes him going to the rear.” Ned Almond has personally stopped rear-bound tanks and sent his own jeep after gasoline for them.

He has also chased and reprimanded recklessly speeding military truck drivers. But he insists on speed in paperwork. An operational order, once given, must be written, stenciled and back on his desk in 20 minutes. And it must not be longer than one foolscap page. “Then,” he says, “maybe someone will read it.”

Nine Rules. Wherever he goes, Almond carries with him a little black book in which are neatly typed these precepts:

1) Constantly keep in mind the objective of the unit you command.

2) Insist on reasonable but positive methods to insure a sound discipline.

3) Constantly strive to excel all other similar units in one or more respects.

4) Give constant attention to matters in which other similar units excel yours, so that you will never be second to any.

5) Some play as well as work; however, the busiest troops, including officers, are usually the happiest.

6) Never compromise with inefficiency.

7) When you determine that an individual, whether officer or enlisted man, is in the wrong place, change him. Many times he will do a superior job in another capacity, while if retained in one in which he is deficient, a disservice is done both to the command and the individual.

8) Never judge any situation without getting all the facts available within a reasonable time. Many rumors are groundless and lead to false starts which require hasty retractions.

9) Energy, coupled with common sense, will normally solve any problem that may confront you.

Third-Class Rat. The general’s Alsatian ancestors emigrated to Virginia around 1800. His father was a farm implement salesman in Luray, where Ned was born 57 years ago. A cousin, who had graduated from Virginia Military Institute, the West Point of the South, gave the boy Ned a set of V.M.I, buttons for his overalls. That started him on his career. Like his cousin, Ned Almond went to V.M.I.

He was a studious “third-class rat” (he entered in his sophomore year), finished third in his class of 1915. In their yearbook, his classmates ribbed him as “young, daring, handsome,” a smart dancer and potential ladykiller. “Sic ’em, Ned!” they urged.

In 1916 he turned down a commission in the Marine Corps, took an Army and lieutenant’s commission. While training at Anniston, Ala., he met and married Margaret Crook, a local belle. Then he sailed for France and World War I’s Western Front. He was wounded (shrapnel creasing his scalp) in the Aisne-Marne offensive. He was recuperating at Biarritz when he got a letter from a superior officer promising him command of a machine-gun battalion if he got back to the front on time. Captain Almond headed north on top of a box car, caught flu, but got his command after he recovered.

In the postwar years, happily caught up with thousands of other officers in the Army’s peacetime education plan, he studied at Fort Benning Infantry School, Fort Leavenworth Command & General Staff School, Army War College, the Air Corps Tactical School, Newport’s Naval War College. Says Almond: “I had to do some fast talking to get into the Air and Navy schools. I had seen some Army officers in Washington who just didn’t know what it was all about when the discussion turned to planes or ships.”

To Liguria. World War II moved Almond from colonel to major general. It also tossed him the hottest potato in the U.S. Army: command of the 92nd Infantry Division. The 92nd was mostly a Negro outfit and the cynosure of the sensitive Negro press. Its rank & file had the handicap of less-than-average literacy and more-than-average superstition. The 92nd did not learn combat discipline easily.

Almond handled his difficult chore with determination and dogged persistence. He trained the 92nd hard, sought to give it an esprit de corps through extracurricular activities (it had a champion basketball team, a topnotch band featuring Sergeant Bobby Plater who composed Jersey Bounce). It finally went overseas in October 1944 to hold the western (Ligurian) anchor of the Allied line across the Italian peninsula.

The 92nd combat record was spotty. It became a polyglot group, absorbing other U.S. and Allied contingents. On the 366th Regiment’s front, some Negro troops fell back precipitately before an enemy attack,* a British Indian unit had to close the gap in the line. Once, at a forward post under machine-gun fire, Almond ordered a sergeant to go out and silence the enemy gun. After a while the sergeant came back.

“Well,” asked General Almond, “did you find that machine gun?” “Yes, sir,” was the reply.

“Did you knock it out?” “No sir. General, that gun was in use.”

Led by two crack Japanese-American regiments, the 92nd eventually rolled up the west coast to Genoa.

To Tokyo. During the Italian campaign, Almond took the bitterest personal blow of his life. His only son, Ned, 23, West Point class of ’43, fighting with the 45th Division in Germany, wag killed in action. In 1944, his son-in-law, Major Thomas Taylor Galloway, 24, first husband of his daughter Margaret, had been killed while flying over France.

Assigned in 1946 to Mac Arthur’s Tokyo headquarters, Almond as acting Chief of Staff first ran G-1 (personnel). He disliked the work. “I’m an infantry soldier,” he said later. “I did my best as G1, but my first love is G-3 [operations]. That’s what the Army is all about.” Almond was soon promoted to Deputy Chief of Staff. In 1949 he moved up to Chief of Staff. Subordinates noted that the promotion had its effect on Almond’s temper. The genial deputy chief became a hardboiled, hard-driving chief.

If MacArthur has any subordinate who qualifies as his trusty right hand, it is Almond. At SCAP headquarters in Tokyo’s Dai Ichi building, the two men were in & out of each other’s offices all day long. Almond geared his working time to the late hours and seven-day routine of the Supreme Commander. He represented MacArthur at most official social functions. The Chief of Staff became one of the most ardent MacArthur disciples. He looks on his superior as the 20th Century’s outstanding military genius; he will not rank MacArthur for all time, “because it’s hard to compare the present day with the time of Napoleon, Caesar or Hannibal.”

To Inchon. Before the Korean war, Almond would drive home from his Dai Ichi building office for a light lunch. Then, weather permitting, he would take his putter out for 45 minutes on a nine-hole putting course in his garden. Occasionally he and his wife slipped away for a long weekend in the mountains at Karuizawa; there he played 36 holes of golf (middle 80s) a day. He also likes ping-pong and canasta.

When he unbends, he tells funny stories drawn from his military experiences; he has a good sense of humor and a flair for mimicry. He gave up tobacco 25 years ago. He has a celebrated partiality for an old-fashioned before dinner. On a recent occasion, when a host served only sherry, Almond frowned, then cracked: “Well, I guess I’ll have to have an old-fashioned sherry.” He loves baked Virginia ham. The story goes that a soldier some years ago lost a Virginia ham that he was supposed to deliver to the general. In a panic, the soldier bought a ham from the nearest butcher, tried to palm it off as a genuine Old Dominion product. Almond detected the fraud, ordered the soldier to write 25 concise words on the differences between ham and Virginia ham.

The general is a devoted family man. His daughter Margaret has married again, to Captain Charles M. Fergusson Jr. Her two boys by her two marriages, Tommy, 7, and Edward Almond, 18 months, are the jay and solace of their grandfather’s life. But even in the bosom of his family, the general never forgets he is an infantry soldier.

He likes to plan domestic operations. For example, no matter where he is, he calls daughter Peggy on Christmas. Because he believes most people waste a lot of time on long-distance calls talking about unimportant things like the weather, he once prepared mimeographed sheets outlining skeleton conversations for both his end of the line and the other. But the last time he called his daughter in the U.S. from Tokyo, the conversation didn’t go according to plan. Matters plainly of inconsequence drifted in from the Tokyo end. Later, Peggy found that her father, despite all his planning, had lost his copy of the blueprint for the call.

On the day last month that he went off to his third war, and to the biggest, most satisfactory job of his career, his wife was shopping in the Tokyo PX. Margaret Almond’s security-conscious husband had not told her that it was time to leave fof Operation Chromite. A lieutenant at the PX tipped her off to the news. She rushed home excitedly. Ned was already zipping shut his B-4 bag. As he drove off, he yelled: “Read about it in the papers!”

*Some held their ground. Negro Lieut. John Fox and a small party were trapped in a farmhouse. As the Germans closed in, Fox phoned for artillery fire directly on the building. An astonished artilleryman phoned back: “Is it safe to fire?” Said Fox: “Fire it. There’s more of them than there are of us.” After the Germans were beaten back, the bodies of heroic Infantryman Fox and his men were found in the demolished farmhouse.