An Old Soldier Fires Away

On the parade grounds at Washington's Fort McNair last week, with ruffles & flourishes, a 17-gun salute and a review of the troops, the U.S. Army marked the retirement of General James Alward Van Fleet, But Old Soldier Van Fleet 61, on the inactive list after 38 years of service including 22 months as Eighth Army commander in Korea, was not yet ready to fade away. The morning after the ceremonies, he went back to the Capitol Hill firing line and expanded on his earlier testimony (TIME, March 16 et seg.) about the Eighth Army's "serious shortage of ammunition."

Operation Stopped. Disturbed by Van Fleet's revelations last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee formed a special five-member subcommittee, headed by Maine's able Margaret Chase Smith, to spotlight "the officials and conditions responsible for the shortages." At the subcommittee's first hearing last week, Van Fleet told the Senators that in June' 1951 he "recommended to General Ridgway, who was then the Far East commander, that we follow [our May counteroffensive] with an amphibious landing on the east coast, and had such an operation well prepared for execution. And that operation was stopped."

Senator Harry Byrd: Who stopped it?

Van Fleet: As far as I know, General Ridgway.

Byrd: You don't know where his orders came from?

Van Fleet: No, sir.

Byrd: And you believed at that time that you could have secured a rather decisive victory had you been permitted to continue your offensive?

Van Fleet: Yes, sir.

This exchange made the hearing's only headlines. Most of Van Fleet's testimony was a reprise of things he had said before. He stuck to his guns, insisting that shortages of ammunition--especially of mortar and 155-mm. howitzer shells-- had made it impossible to "plan adequate defensive fire, harassing, interdiction and counterbattery, to keep the enemy from launching an attack." Asked whether he had enough ammunition to halt a Chinese offensive, Van Fleet replied: Yes, but only because "the Chinese cannot maintain an offensive for more than a few weeks. They do not know how." Van Fleet got strong supporting fire from the subcommittee's only other witness of the week: Lieut. General Edward M. Almond (ret.), commander of the X Corps under MacArthur, then Ridgway, then Van Fleet. Almond called the testimony of his ex-boss "sound and complete," said that delays caused by ammunition shortages had "interfered with aggressive operations calculated to defeat the enemy."

Counterattack Readied. After listening to Van Fleet and Almond, subcommittee members were surer than ever that some types of ammunition had been in chronically short supply in Korea.

From the Pentagon floated rumors that high Army brass was sharpening long knives for a counterattack on Van Fleet. The brass would find that he was well entrenched on Capitol Hill. One Senator wrote to Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens asking that Van Fleet be kept on active duty "because the country needs him." And Styles Bridges was so taken with Van Fleet that he offered him a job as military advisor to his Appropriations committee. Van Fleet promised to think it over.

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