GREAT BRITAIN: Appointment on the Rhine

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Promoted to command NATO's North ern Army Group: General Sir Gerald Templer, 55, able, hard-boiled British professional who in two years of jungle fighting has mastered the Communist threat to rubber-rich Malaya. Austere and dedicated, Sandhurstman Templer found Malaya in despair, with the Red guerrillas everywhere pressing harder; his counterattack matched their ferocity, in two years reduced the average monthly toll of murders and other "incidents" from 500 to 100.

Templer will stay in Malaya until June. His successor: Sir Donald MacGillivray, 47, a Scottish diplomat whose job it will be to consolidate the peace that Templer made possible by war. Templer's new job is the top field command that Britain has to give. Under NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Alfred M. Gruenther, he will command British, Canadian, Dutch, Belgian and Danish troops guarding the vital plainlands between the Baltic and the Rhine. The backbone of his command: some 80,000 men of Britain's Army of the Rhine, which includes the heaviest concentration of armor (three full divisions) in Western Europe.

Templer of Malaya is unlikely to stay long on the Rhine. He is now considered odds-on favorite to be the next Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), the No. 1 military job in the British Commonwealth.