Word: commander
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...troops into combat in Korea and Viet Nam with such gallantry that he was twice awarded the Silver Star, the nation's third highest combat medal. He moved easily from battlefield to classroom, from Pentagon desk to international command, gathering ribbons and rank along the way and, last year, becoming the youngest four-star general in the Army. Then, last spring, Sam Sims Walker became trapped in a bureaucratic Pentagon crossfire, and last week he resigned from the Army after more than 32 years of service-at the same time bringing into the open a battle between generals...
Fourteen months ago, Walker was given his fourth star and his toughest assignment: commander of NATO's land-based forces in southeastern Europe, with headquarters at Izmir, Turkey. This command used to have 600,000 troops, but the Greeks pulled out their 150,000-man contingent after Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974. Walker thus found himself in the unenviable role of being an American general leading a Turkish army on Turkish soil at a time when the U.S. Congress was punishing Turkey with an arms embargo...
Walker carried his appeal up through the chain of command to Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and then, in a seven-page message, to Commander in Chief Jimmy Carter. After talking with Brown, the President endorsed the demotion in a crisp, one-page letter to Walker...
...uncompromising attitude toward uniformed subordinates may reflect Secretary of Defense Brown's determination to recapture control of the Pentagon from the admirals and generals who for several years have been operating relatively free from civilian interference. Thus some old soldiers are dismayed at the direction the command at the Pentagon seems to be taking, as illustrated by Walker's fate. "It's a goddamned travesty," says one general who retired recently...
Readers of Fate Is the Hunter, Ernest K. Gann's unnerving account of his days as an airline and Air Transport Command pilot, will recognize the flying style. What is surprising about this rambunctious autobiography, however, is that although Gann tells a number of good wing-and-prayer yarns, some of his most surprising adventures have had nothing to do with aviation. He has been a newsreel cameraman, soldier, Broadway actor, polo player, farmer, cartoonist, commercial fisherman, deepwater yachtsman, Hollywood talent scout and, of course, a bestselling novelist (The High and the Mighty, Band of Brothers). He wrote, directed...