Executives: The Corporate Marine

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At 46, Alleghany Corp. President Charles Thomas Ireland Jr. is a veteran of more corporate combat than most businessmen could expect to see, or survive, in a lifetime. In 17 years with the huge holding company, which controls railroad, mutual funds, real estate and other interests worth more than $7 billion, Ireland has been a top tactician, first for the late Robert Young, more recently for Financier Allan P. Kirby, in seemingly endless court squabbles with stockholders, in bitter battles for the control of railroads (the New York Central, the Missouri Pacific) and in savage proxy fights for Alleghany itself (with the Murchison brothers of Dallas).

Last week, musing that "compared with what we have known, all is pretty well straightened out here now," Ireland announced that he was stepping out. Weary of the wars? No, just going to a new theater. This week, pending routine board approval, the redhaired, crew-cut campaigner will move one block down on Manhattan's Park Avenue to the headquarters of the International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. Though he will be only one of 24 vice presidents, Ireland will play a familiar role as special assistant to ITT Chairman and President Harold S. Geneen.

Some of the Ginger. The change was "Chick" Ireland's choice. Woolworth Heir Kirby, who not only holds 60% of Allegheny's voting stock (worth $58 million) but is also one of the biggest single stockholders in ITT, has been incapacitated since a stroke last spring. To succeed him as chairman, Alleghany's board chose Son Fred Kirby, 48, who had been an executive vice president. There was no upheaval, Fred and Younger Brother Allan Jr., a vice president, urged Ireland to stay on, but Ireland clearly felt that much of the ginger had departed with Allan Sr. He confided a desire to move on to Friend Hal Geneen last fall. Replied Geneen, who knows a good acquisition when he sees one: "Why don't you think of coming over to ITT?"

Ireland admits to feeling a "big emotional wrench" in leaving Alleghany, which he regards as a sort of "corporate Marine Corps." Son of a Portland, Me., chiropodist, Ireland himself was a genuine World War II hero in the Marines, which he joined after finishing Bowdoin. At 30, he joined the mercurial Robert Young at Alleghany as its $7,500-a-year secretary and counsel. Within three years, as Young and Partner Kirby immersed themselves in the long proxy battle that won them control of the Central from the Vanderbilt family, Ireland was running the store singlehanded.

After Young committed suicide in 1958, Ireland became Kirby's chief lieutenant. The day after Kirby lost control of Alleghany to the Murchison brothers in the famed proxy "battle of the century" (TIME cover, June 16, 1961), Ireland got his orders. Said Kirby to Ireland, who was to direct the successful 21 year counterattack: "If you win, you'll be known as that brilliant young company president. But if you lose, you'll just be a middle-aged man looking for a job." Scouring the country, Ireland eventually came up with enough stockholding allies to let Kirby regain control from the Texans.