New Boss for the Leathernecks

Major General Oliver Prince ("O.P.") Smith, 57, last week was on his way back 'to the U.S. and a new assignment, after commanding the 1st Marine Division with distinction for seven bloody and glorious months in Korea (TIME, Sept. 25). The 1st's new boss was another fighter of the same "old breed": Major General Gerald C. Thomas, 56, who enlisted in the Corps in 1917, won a battlefield commission during World War I.

Jerry Thomas has been in the thick of Marine Corps battles in both wars: Verdun, Belleau Wood, Soissons, Meuse-Argonne; Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Bougainville. A competent desk man as well as a first-class fighter, he was recalled from the Pacific in 1944 to head the Corps' Plans & Policies Division in Washington. Old Leathernecks recall his quizzical understatement during the fight for Guadalcanal : "We want to give them [the Japs] a sense of futility."

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