Goodbye to Van Fleet

After 21 distinguished months as full commander in Korea and close to 42 years in the Army as cadet and officer, rugged, flat-flanked General James Alward Van Fleet got the order that all soldiers await when they pass 60: report to Washington preparatory to retirement. His successor as commander of the Eighth Army: Lieut. General Maxwell D. Taylor (see box).

Van Fleet, West Point classmate of Ike Eisenhower, went to Korea in 1951 with an unexcelled reputation for combat leadership, a reputation earned after D-day when he rose within eight months from a regimental command to command of a corps. Less widely appreciated was his success in postwar Greece, where, without formal command over the Greek army, he led Greek forces to victory over tough Communist rebels. "Van Flit" as the Greeks lovingly called him came to personify the unity of the non-Communist world, a major political achievement in that intensely political and divided country.

Throughout Van Fleet's tour in Korea, U.S. correspondents, always reluctant to credit a general with anything more than bare literacy, continued to characterize him as a "bluff soldier"--a combat type with no political brains. What they meant was that he did not agree with their judgment of how to treat Korea's Syngman Rhee. Van Fleet, simple in the sense that he knows a simple issue when he sees one, recognized Rhee as the only Korean leader of any substance. His policy was to work with Rhee while the U.S. State Department's men in Korea tended to tear Rhee down without having any apparent idea of what they would do if Rhee fell. Van Fleet's attitude helped him in his policy of expanding and training the R.O.K. army as a combat force, which he did with singleminded stubbornness over high-level resistance, even in the Pentagon. His greatest achievement, however, was to build up and maintain the morale of the Eighth Army through endless months when there was little action and less hope of victory.

This week James Van Fleet, slated for retirement on March 31, was getting ready to go home to his small orange grove in Florida.* Said U.N. Commander Mark Clark: "General Van Fleet has earned the gratitude of his country and of the free world."

* When Van Fleet sang the praises of Florida at a press conference last week, a puzzled British correspondent asked: "Where is that?" The general gave him a couple of quick coordinates. "The other end from Maine and across from California," he said.

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