A Change of Command

Usually, a military change of command is accompanied by the most poignant pomp and circumstance. Boot heels click and swords flash in the sun; hands sweep neatly to helmet brims and pennants slowly change place on flagstaffs. Last week, as France withdrew from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the change of command was far from melodramatic. French General Glean Crepin, commander of the Allied Forces in Central Europe, demanded a private ceremony in the inner courtyard of the Chateau de Fontainebleau. There, with the quietest of diplomatic drumrolls, he relinquished control of the 60 divisions in NATO's European defense machine.

The request for secrecy was understandable, for Crepin's successor as NATO's top operational commander was a former German panzer officer, General Johann Adolf Count von Kielmansegg, 59. Equally understandable was German reluctance to overplay the fact that Bonn's 400,000-man Bundeswehr looms even larger than before in the alliance's military structure.

Interim Agreement. The French departure was taken in cool stride by the rest of NATO's 14 full-time members. NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. General Lyman Lemnitzer, issued a heartfelt order of the day to the 2,400 departing French troops, expressing the West's "appreciation for your most valuable service in the past and my sincere hopes for your future success." Simultaneously, Lemnitzer was complying with another deadline: De Gaulle's demand that U.S. forces leave France by next April. U.S. Air Force Colonel Harold Fulmer, flying the first American planes and equipment (mostly desks) from the 27-year-old French airbase of Evreux to the new NATO station at Mildenhall, England, said simply: "We hate to go." Actually, Fulmer did not go. He and his crewmen flew back from England to spend the July 4th weekend with their families in France.

What would become of the 72,000 French ground troops in West Germany? Last week Paris and Bonn reached an interim agreement that will permit the French to remain on German soil while a new, non-NATO basis for their presence is negotiated. This week French Premier Georges Pompidou flies to London for talks with Harold Wilson on the possibility of British entry into the Common Market. To pave the way for those discussions, British Defense Minister Denis Healey apologized for intemperate charges (that leaked out of a private meeting) accusing Charles de Gaulle of being "a bad partner in NATO and a bad partner in the Common Market."

Staunch Ally. De Gaulle has made his point about the need for a new alignment in NATO, and principally for a new command structure. For all the movement within the alliance last week, France's President made it eminently clear through the course of his Russian tour that his country was still a staunch ally of the West. Few of his allies doubted that France would fail to respond with all it had to offer if a military emergency arose.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.