(6 of 8)
Were the Russians to attack and keep rolling, NATO would unhesitatingly resort to its tremendous nuclear firepower. The Seventh Army alone can lay down a simultaneous barrage of some 200 nuclear explosions with its 280-mm. gun, 8-in. howitzers, and such missiles as the Honest John, the 75-mile Corporal, the 200-mile Redstone and the 25-mile Lacrosse. In addition, NATO's tactical air forces, built around U.S. fighter-bombers, could unleash an overwhelming nuclear bombardment. Fighting with the atom, NATO has calculated that it could stop the Russians, even if they threw 40 divisions into the attack and supported them with their own tactical and strategic weapons.
The Razor's Edge. But the Seventh Army must also be prepared to fight with conventional weapons, and no one knows it better than the 3rd Armored's General Abrams. "We're combat-ready in 'atomics,' " he says, "but a lot of things could happen without having to use them. If I thought only in terms of 'atomics,' and I couldn't use them for ten days or so, then, by God, I couldn't get the job done right."
To get the job done right, with whatever it takes, General Abrams is honing his 3rd Armored to a razor's edge. Each man spends some 135 days a year on field maneuvers. The division's tanks and combat vehicles are kept stocked with a full supply of ammunition. Since taking command of the division a year ago, Abrams has weeded out some 200 officers and men who did not shape up to his standards. Abrams tries every day to get away from the paperwork at his headquarters in Frankfurt, climb aboard his personal Bell helicopter and whirl off to inspect everyone in a unit from bird colonel to buck private. "No one is more deliberate in planning for war," says General Bruce Clarke of Abrams. "No one is more violent in execution."
At the Bottom. Abe Abrams has spent years living down a family nickname of "Tootsie," a fond reference to his cherubic babyhood back home in Springfield. Mass. Abrams was the oldest of three children born to Creighton Abrams Sr., a railroad hand on the Boston & Albany, and the former Nellie Randall, the daughter of an estate caretaker. When Abrams was a boy, the family settled in the rural area of nearby Feeding Hills. There Abrams raised baby beef, ran a trap line for skunk and muskrat, patched together a wheezing model T and learned to shoot by drilling holes with his .22 through tin cans tossed up by his father.
In high school Abrams won nearly every academic and extracurricular honor in sight. As captain and center of the football team, he led his school to an undefeated, untied and unscored-upon season and the championship of Western Massachusetts. One day a West Point graduate lectured at school and enraptured Abe with tales of the Academy and its spirit.