Shuffle

The impending retirement of U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Jefferson Caffery, 68, after 43 years in the Foreign Service, last week brought on a diplomatic shuffle.

Named by President Eisenhower to follow Caffery in Cairo was slight, handsome Henry A. ("Hank") Byroade, 41, now the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs. A 1937 graduate from West Point, he played basketball and B-team football, served in the Army Engineers and directed the building of B-29 bases in China during World War II. He became a brigadier general at 32 while serving as General George Marshall's assistant during the 1946 pacification attempt in China. He came to the State Department on loan from the Army and stayed on.

Taking over Byroade's present job will be U.S. Ambassador to India and Nepal George V. Allen, 51, a former newspaper reporter and Buncombe County, N.C. high-school teacher and football, basketball, baseball and volleyball coach. Allen entered the Foreign Service in 1930, in time became Ambassador to Iran, where he often played tennis with the Shah. Before taking over the New Delhi embassy in 1953, Allen supervised the Voice of America, and put in 3½ years as Ambassador to Yugoslavia.

Allen's successor in India was not named last week. Among those mentioned speculatively for the post was Kentucky's defeated Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper.