ARMY & NAVY: General Shift

ARMY & NAVY

Major Generals in command of Army Corps areas seldom stay long in one place. Their routine is to spend four years at home stations, three in foreign posts, then home again. The War Department wants them to get familiar with all U. S. fortifications. In a general shakeup of corps commanders last week the department announced these shifts:

Major General Frank Parker, now in charge of the 6th Corps Area (Chicago), to command the potent Philippine Department. Dapper, diplomatic General Parker achieved a brilliant War record as commander of the First Division in the Argonne. South Carolina-born and socially inclined, he did much to revive the social life of Chicago’s Fort Sheridan. With his wife and one of his daughters, Anne (who was last year voted the most beautiful girl at Smith College), he will sail for Manila next month.

Major General Ewing E. Booth, commander of the Philippine Department, to command the 9th Corps Area (San Francisco). Also a War hero (Marne, St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne), onetime deputy Chief of Staff, General Booth is fair-headed, slight, bubbling with nervous energy. He is noted for loyalty to his subordinates.

Major General Preston Brown, commander of the Panama Canal, to succeed General Parker in the Chicago area. An efficient “old school” soldier, General Brown is blunt, baldpated, muscular. Son of an Army colonel, he went to Yale, got his appointment to West Point while serving as an enlisted man in the regular army. His successor in the Panama Department is Major General Harold Benjamin Fiske who was last week promoted from brigadier and shifted from command of the Atlantic sector to command of the whole department. Large-boned, calm Major General Ed-win Baruch Winans, sportsman and socialite, commander of the 8th Corps Area (San Antonio), to duty with the General Staff in Washington. Son of a Michigan governor, he has the bearing and manners of a country gentleman.

Major General Frank Ross McCoy, commander of the First Cavalry Division in Texas, to be commander of the 7th Corps Area (Omaha). General McCoy is diplomatic but loves a fight. Once when a Southern professor heckled him during a speech at Georgia’s Mercer University, he retorted: “There are ladies here, but I would be glad to argue with you—or have a discussion with you—or have a fight with you.” He is one of the few fighters of San Juan Hill still on the active list. At that battle, wounded in the leg, he was treated by his brigade commander, who was also a doctor. They became fast friends. General McCoy married his niece, was his aide-de-camp in Cuba and the Philippines. The man was General Leonard Wood. Famed as a troubleshooter, General McCoy was sent to supervise the Nicaraguan presidential election of 1928, went to Manchuria with Lord Lytton’s League of Nations commission.

Major General Johnson Hagood, commander of the Omaha area, to command the 8th Corps Area (San Antonio). He is small, young-looking, cerebral, likes golf and bridge. Critical, deep-thinking (he used to teach philosophy at West Point), he startled the War Department last April by announcing before the House Military Affairs Committee that the Army was too complex and top-heavy, that the War Department should be demilitarized and given the status of a civil bureau.