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NEW LEADER
GEN. DAN I. SULTAN
Sultan Becomes Deputy Chief
Maj. Gen. Dan I. Sultan was this week named Deputy Commander under Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, and the CBI Theater welcomed a veteran
of 36 years' Regular Army service with a wealth of experience designed to add weight to the impending drive against the Japanese.
Until five years ago assigned to the Corps of Engineers, Mississippi-born Sultan has since held Infantry commands - first a brigade
in the Hawaiian Department for two years starting in 1939, completing his tour as a major general; then during 1941, the 38th Division training at
Camp Shelby, Miss.; and, finally, the Eighth Army Corps in Texas until he was ordered to the CBI in November, 1943. He has in turn commanded all
units from a platoon to an Army Corps.
The shadow of things to come was cast by Sultan while an undergraduate at West Point. Classmates recall his four years as a football
stalwart at tackle and center for the Cadet eleven and particularly his iron man stint as a senior in 1906, when he played every minute of every game
on the schedule.
Later - from 1912 through 1916 - he coached the West Point team. Significantly, the rosters included Cadets Eisenhower, Bradley, Larken,
Pritchard, Hobbs, Woodruff and Gearhardt, all destined to become distinguished generals. He arranged the first of the famous Army-Notre Dame series
when the immortal Knute Rockne was captain of the Fighting Irish and he was a member of the Football Rules Committee for three years when Walter Camp
was its president.
Sultan's decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal on two occasions, permitting him to wear the Oak Leaf Cluster with the
medal. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Merit, Nicaragua, and the Congressional Medal of Distinction, these for a tour of duty 1929-31, when
he commanded U.S. troops making a survey of the Inter-Oceanic Canal Route through Nicaragua. He was then appointed by President Herbert Hoover as a
member of the Inter-Oceanic canal Board to determine what steps the United states should next take in enlarging and improving canal facilities across
the Isthmus.
During World War I, Sultan served as a colonel on the War Department General Staff for a four-year tour of duty and was in France and
Germany for a short period as a General Staff Officer.
He was an honor graduate of the General Staff School at Leavenworth in 1922 and graduated from the Army War College in the class of
1925.
Among other important posts held by the general were membership of the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors, Washington, D.C.,
1926-29; assistant to Harry Hopkins in charge of the Civil Works Administration in Chicago and Cooks County, Ill., 1934; and appointment by President
Roosevelt as one of the three commissioners of Washington, D.C., for a four-year term beginning in 1934.
Sultan married Florence Braden, of West Point, in 1916 and has two daughters. His eldest daughter, Sheila, is the wife of Lt. Col.
Marshal R. Gray, Army Air Force, now on duty in North Africa. His other daughter, Linda Fraser, is engaged in war work in the United States.
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