Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe was withdrawing from the NATO military structure. SHAPE and all the other NATO installations, including NATO Headquarters and Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT), were informed that they must leave French territory by April 1967. Belgium became the host nation for both NATO's political headquarters and SHAPE. General Lyman Lemnitzer, SACEUR at the time, had hoped that SHAPE could be located near to NATO Headquarters, as had been the case in Paris, but the Belgian authorities decided that SHAPE should be located at least 50 kilometres from Brussels, NATO's new location, because SHAPE was a major wartime military target. The Belgian
Lee Flemming Lee Flemming Lee Andrew Flemming (born May 11, 1968) is a retired United States Army Infantry Officer; he was the 27th commanding officer of the Installation and Base Support Group (BSG) of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) from July 2014 - June 2017 and most notably is the first African American in the history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to command the installation since its inception in 1949 after the conclusion of World War II. SHAPE is the installation that houses Allied Command Operations (ACO) and the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). COL Flemming was awarded