Brother Rat

In Washington's Munitions Building last week there was a new pair of legs under old William Tecumseh Sherman's ornately carved desk. Bald, 60-year-old Brigadier General George Veazey Strong, long overdue for duty away from Washington, had been transferred from the top of the General Staff's War Plans Division to command of the VII Corps Area at Omaha. His successor was a 52-year-old, brand-new brigadier general: straight-lipped, shock-haired Leonard Townsend Gerow (pronounced jehr-oh').

When Infantryman Gerow reported to Chief of Staff George Catlett Marshall for his new detail, the greeting was brief. General Marshall handed him a sheaf of papers to which was clipped the little red tag meaning "Urgent." Said Marshall, "You'd better go to work right now."

Leonard Gerow knew what to do. Before his last detail (second in command of the 8th Division at Columbia, S. C.), he had put in 18 months in W. P. D. as General Strong's executive. And during his 29 years as an officer he had gone through the Army's best finishing schools, from the War College down, had seen plenty of service with troops and acquitted himself with the cold efficiency that George Marshall likes. Like Marshall he is no West Pointer but a V. M. I. graduate. The legend of Cadet Marshall, All-Southern tackle, was ten years old when Brother Rat Gerow got his diploma in 1911.