(See Cover)
The sirens screech in the dead of the West German night. In dozens of barracks and off-base housing units, thousands of U.S. men and officers snap awake and dive for field uniforms and equipment. One by one, the diesel engines of the squat, 52-ton M-60 tanks cough and rumble to life. In quick order, the assembled units roar down serpentine German roads toward fighting positions that have long since been plotted for protective cover and fields of fire. Within two hours of the first cry of the sirens, the 14,617-man 3rd Armored Division of the U.S. Seventh Army is braced in battle deployment against any Communist thrust through the "Hessian Corridor"—a stretch of gentle, rolling country that invites invasion from East Germany.
Even on such practice alerts, which take place at least once a month, the 3rd Armored had better be ready, or it will soon hear from its commanding officer, one of the toughest soldiers in a tough U.S. Army. Says Major General Creighton ("Abe") Abrams, 47: "Our mission is to be prepared to fight. We are ready to fight." If war comes in Germany, it will smash against the U.S. Seventh Army, which guards more than 300 miles of the East German and Czechoslovakian border and anchors the NATO defense line that stretches 650 miles from Austria to the North Sea. The most vital mission in the five-division Seventh Army belongs to the 3rd Armored, which must plug the Hessian Corridor, a historic route of conquest. Says Lieut. General Garrison ("Gar") Davidson, 57, commander of the Seventh Army: "The 3rd Armored will give the Reds their first bloody nose."
Wider Choice. Behind the preparations being made by Abe Abrams and his U.S. Army fighting comrades lies the decision made by President John Kennedy last spring to increase the flexibility of the nation's defenses. The main shield of the U.S. remains the thermonuclear deterrent—the strategic missiles and bombers meant to discourage Nikita Khrushchev. But Kennedy holds that the Army must also be ready to fight with gunpowder or with tactical nuclear weapons anywhere from the plains of Europe to the rain forests of Asia. "We intend to have a wider choice than humiliation or all-out nuclear action," he said in his July report to the nation.
Kennedy's personal military adviser is General Maxwell Taylor, a leading exponent of flexible warfare (TIME cover, July 28). Last month the Defense Department merged Stateside Army units and Air Force fighter-bomber squadrons to increase vital air-ground coordination on the battlefield. In appropriations, the Army got an extra $1.4 billion with instructions to spend it mainly on the men and materiel of limited war. Around the world, Army units are getting a badly needed transfusion of modern equipment: the fully automatic M-14 rifle (which finally is replacing the famed M-1 of World War II), the lightweight M-60 machine gun, a lighter and livelier Jeep, the M-60 tank, and enough M-113 armored personnel carriers to give a lift to every footslogging infantryman in the Seventh Army.