ARMED FORCES: The Quiet Ones

At West Point, he was a “Clean Sleeve” —neither scholar, nor athlete, nor class leader. “No one.” says a classmate, “would have expected him to become the first general in his class, or any general at all, as far as that goes.” But in his quiet, unobtrusive way, Lyman L. Lemnitzer (TIME cover. May 11, 1959) climbed to the very top of the Army ladder. A World War II specialist in logistical problems, he drew up plans for the 1942 invasion of Africa, negotiated the German surrender in Italy in 1945, but remained enough of a combat soldier to go to parachute school at 51 and earn the Silver Star under fire while commanding the 7th Infantry Division in Korea. Commander of the U.N. forces in Korea (1955-57), he became Army Vice Chief of Staff in 1957, then Chief of Staff in 1959. Last week President Eisenhower announced that sometime Clean Sleeve Lemnitzer. 61, would be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, top post in the U.S. armed forces.

Lemnitzer will replace ailing Air Force General Nathan F. Twining, 62, who underwent surgery for lung cancer last year. Twining, after serving the normal two-year term, stayed on for a second at President Eisenhower’s urging. When Lemnitzer moves up, probably in late September, his successor as Army Chief of Staff will be Four-Star General George Henry Decker, 58, who is even calmer and quieter than Lemnitzer. “You could set a bomb off under his desk and he wouldn’t turn a hair,” a fellow officer once said. He, too, specialized in logistics during World War II, but won a Silver Star in combat in New Guinea. Army Comptroller in 1952-55 and later commander of the U.N. forces in Korea, Decker succeeded Lemnitzer as Vice Chief of Staff in 1959. A graduate of Lafayette College, General Decker provides one more argument against the widespread notion that only a West Point graduate can reach the top in the U.S.

Army. Of the 21 men to become Army Chief of Staff since the system was set up in 1903, he is the seventh who never attended West Point.*