ARMED FORCES: Forces on the Ground

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But he saw some lively action anyway. As the man with the plans, he went with General Mark Clark on the famous Oct. 22 pre-invasion submarine landing upon the French North African coast. Objective: to meet key French leaders at a villa, persuade them not to fight Torch forces. But Vichy police got a tip, came in force to search the meeting place. Lemnitzer was only half dressed when a British commando escort swept through the house picking up all traces of their visit —including Lemnitzer's pants. In his B.V.D.s Lemnitzer leaped out a window just ahead of the police, ran to a nearby woods, lay shivering on the ground. He finally made it back aboard the waiting submarine in a big, highly visible white sweater—only to find Mark Clark freshly outfitted in the Lemnitzer pants.

A few days later, flying with General Jimmy Doolittle and other brass to Torch's headquarters at Gibraltar, Lem manned their B-17's radio compartment gun, shot down one of four attacking German Ju-88s. Finally, he got back to command his 34th Ack-Ack long enough for a few strafings by the then-superior Luftwaffe. But always jobs aplenty called for a workhorse staffman. He handled Seventh Army's embarkation for Sicily, was promptly called to be Deputy Chief of Staff for British Field-Marshal Sir Harold Alexander's Fifteenth Army Group. He rose to major general and staff chief for the Mediterranean Theater without taking up much of anybody's newsprint.

His lifelong habit of low visibility became his biggest asset when he turned up in Switzerland with Allen Dulles and a British major general in a cloak-and-dagger operation, headed the talks with German generals who surrendered their forces in Italy, a few days before V-E day.

Milestones. Lyman Lemnitzer, clean-sleeve cadet who grew up to be a studious, smart and consistently calm officer, proved in history's biggest war to have a rare capacity for diplomacy in his worldwide soldiering. From then on he made events more often than he watched them, and his work of the past 14 years is marked by milestones he set as the U.S. moved to its present defense posture. Efficiently, he:

¶Explored, as Armyman on the Joint Strategic Survey Committee (1946-47), the implications of atomic arms on future war.

¶Surveyed, in 1948, the defense needs of Western Europe's war-ravaged nations, helped herd through Congress the U.S.'s Mutual Defense Assistance Program (companion to the Marshall Plan), set up the first allocation of military material.

¶Sought, when Korea broke out (1950), a division command, got it (11th Airborne, Fort Campbell, Ky.) from Chief of Staff J. Lawton Collins. This command, generally recognized as part of his final grooming for staff chief, carried only one condition: 51-year-old Major General Lemnitzer had first to go through the muscle-rending jump school at Fort Benning, Ga. He did.

¶Earned, under artillery fire (1952),while commanding 7th Infantry Division in Korea, his expected general's Silver Star (among other medals on his nine-ribbon row: Commander of the British Empire, Distinguished Service Medal).

¶Froze design, started production of the Army's now-in-use, first-generation missiles when, as the Army's Plans and Research Chief (1952-55), he hit the roles and missions crisis at its peak.