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One reason it does is Norstad himself. Six years of continuous duty with NATO—one of the longest overseas tours ever served by a U.S. officer of his rank—has made Norstad an outstanding specimen of the soldier-statesman. Says J.C.S. Chairman Nathan Twining: "Everything Norstad does in NATO he equates in the political atmosphere. His job is more diplomatic than anything else. Like a doctor, he is rushing around to fix this crisis here, iron out that difficulty there. It's a helluva job, but the guy's got what it takes to do it." Norstad, says one admiring SHAPE colonel, "is not conspicuously American. He never makes a move that, of itself, gives a clue to his nationality."
Not the least of Norstad's assets as SACEUR is his appearance. Quietly proud that none of his clothing sizes have changed since his cadet days, Norstad stands 6 ft. 1 in., weighs 142 Ibs., and with his wavy hair, finely chiseled nostrils and strong, pointed jaw, could almost as well be a product of central casting as of West Point. Early this year when the general rose to speak at a London dinner, one old British civil servant muttered approvingly: "He looks like the North Atlantic alliance."
Into the Stratosphere. The airman who commands SHAPE is a North Atlantic man in ancestry as well as looks. Born 50 years ago in Minneapolis, Lauris Norstad is Swedish on his mother's side, Norwegian on his father's. He grew up in Red Wing, Minn., where his father was pastor of St. Peter's Lutheran Church. Lauris fished the back channels of the Mississippi, fiddled with motors and models, even put together the first radio in Red Wing, and wrote short stories and poems "for my own amazement."
At high school young Norstad edited the student paper, made so many teams and was elected to so many offices that his family teased him "about being president of every organization in school except the girls' athletic association." At West Point, where he "read a helluva lot, which was inconsistent with excellence in studies," Norstad graduated 139th in a class of 241. "His faults," reported the 1930 class yearbook, "are a modesty approaching an inferiority complex and an unappeasable desire for sleep."
In a profession not noted for breadth of reading, Norstad quickly became conspicuous as one airman who read voraciously, ranging from The Federalist to the memoirs of the Aga Khan. In later Washington days, he liked to argue law with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who was so impressed that he offered to recommend him for a professorship at Harvard Law School. In fact, soon after his graduation from West Point, Norstad almost decided to leave the service for law. Recalls Norstad: "I'd look at my squadron commander, a major who had been in the service for 15 years, and I'd ask myself: 'How can I do this sort of thing for that long?' "