No Time to Retire

Last summer, a 52-year-old Navy captain decided, after 20 years of service, to go back to civilian life. He asked to be retired. The Navy approved, then yanked a 58-year-old reserve commander out of civilian life to fill his job. Boiling mad, the reservist went to see his Congressman, Pennsylvania's James E. Van Zandt, a naval reserve captain himself. He found a ready audience. Van Zandt and many other Congressmen had decided that too many able, relatively young officers were retiring.

Lieut. General Elwood ("Pete") Quesada, one of the Air Force's top tactical experts, retired at 47 without explanation. Rear Admiral Alvin D. Chandler left the Navy at 49 to become president of the College of William & Mary. Air Force Brigadier General Horace A. Shepard, a brilliant aeronautical engineer, had resigned at 38 to take .a better-paying job.

When the 1952 appropriations bill came up, Van Zandt tacked on a rider: No money was to be used for retirement pay for officers who left before they reached the compulsory retirement age (60 for officers up to brigadier general, 62 for major generals, 64 for above major general). An officer could retire on three-quarters pay before his time only if he had a physical disability or if the Secretary of Defense considered it for the good of the service or a case of personal hardship.

The new law had the Pentagon in an uproar. There was an old and cherished custom that an admiral or general could retire to pasture after completing his tour as a top dog of his service, even though he was under the age for compulsory retirement.*The new law, the

Pentagon argued, would also keep around a lot of dead wood--colonels and brigadier generals with no chance of advancement.

Last week Congress' action was getting results. The Pentagon reported that "many officers who had applied for retirements have now withdrawn their applications."

* Notable exceptions: Admiral Claude C. Bloch, who at 61, stepped down from his four-star job as chief of the U.S. Fleet to serve as a two-star admiral under his former subordinate, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, at Pearl Harbor; General Frank M. Andrews, who dropped from major general to a colonelcy after a four-year tour of staff duty at Air Force headquarters in 1939, stayed on, and became a lieutenant general in 1941, two years before his death in a plane crash.

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