National Defense: Renaissance at the Top

To give the new Army energy and brains, to carry out Chief of Staff George C. Marshall’s promise to fit men to the jobs, get younger executives, comb the cobs out of the Army’s top commands—these were the reasons for shifting 26 generals last week.

> To command the entire Caribbean defense area (Panama, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, six other bases), 57-year-old Major General Frank Maxwell Andrews (Air Forces) succeeds finicky, 62-year-old Lieut. General Daniel Van Voorhis (Cavalry). The Caribbean Defense Command is the biggest field job yet given an Army airman. The change is also a drastic remedy for one of the Army’s sore spots. As General Van Voorhis’ subordinate air commander, in an area where air defense is paramount, Frank Andrews had been kicked into a back corner, given little chance to do his all-important job. Already tried & proved on the General Staff (in charge of Army training), he now has the chance to show that an airman in command of air and ground forces can see the Army whole.

> New commander of the new, rapidly expanding Armored Force is an Army athlete, poloist, artilleryman: 53-year-old Jacobs Loucks Devers (rhymes with severs). One of the Army’s youngest major generals, a colonel until 1940, “Jakie” Devers has lately done very well in command of Fort Bragg, N.C., and the Ninth (Infantry) Division. So far as actual practice or command goes, he has everything to learn about tanks. His compensating assets: a proved talent for vigorous command, a capacity for letting qualified subordinates use their brains and experience, constructive disrespect for red tape.

General Devers succeeds able 56-year-old Major General Adna Romanza Chaffee, a reformed cavalryman who pioneered tank warfare in the Army when tanks were noisy nuisances, but fell victim to ill health just after the Armored Force was organized under his command last year. Most of General Chaffee’s key subordinates are also ex-cavalrymen who have suspected and bitterly opposed an attempt by the jealous Infantry to get control of the Armored Force. As a horse artilleryman who has recently commanded an Infantry division, General Devers is a logical choice to quash such rivalries, weld tank, infantry and artillery units which make up the Armored Force into an effective fighting team.

> Into four major air commands went four new commanders, all younger than their predecessors. All have reputations for energy, skill in the air, sound sense. Youngest is 49-year-old Brigadier General William O. Ryan, a pursuit commander who was assigned to the Fourth Air Force (Riverside. Calif.). To the Army’s youngest major general. 51-year-old Lewis Hyde Brereton (one of the few Army men whose careers began in the Navy) goes command of the Third Air Force at Tampa, Fla. To succeed Major General James E. Chaney, who is watching World War II in Great Britain, 54-year-old Major General Herbert A. Dargue takes command of the First Air Force at Mitchel Field. L.I. (see p. 33). New commander of the Second Air Force (Spokane, Wash.) is 53-year-old Major General Millard F. Harmon Jr.

> Able, 58-year-old Major General Robert C. Richardson Jr. was relieved as chief of the War Department’s reorganized Bureau of Public Relations, given command of the Seventh Army Corps (Birmingham, Ala.). “Nellie” Richardson was surprised, temporarily pained when he was snatched from command of the First Cavalry Division last February, ordered to put Army publicity on a pre-war footing, prepare an organization for whatever wartime control may be necessary. No reflection on him, his newest assignment simply accented the Army’s desperate need for competent field officers.