G.I. Riot

From a building in the disciplinary area of Indiana's Ft. Benjamin Harrison last week rushed an irate mob of G.I. prisoners. They snatched up the whitewashed boulders lining the paths and flower beds and rushed the guards. Suddenly, th compound became a battlefield.

The prisoners were Army recalcitrants and out-&-out criminals: everything from AWOLs to arsonists, rapists and murderers. Some 2,700 are housed in the Ft. Harrison disciplinary barracks.

For several days the prisoners had been sourly discussing the case of Private Joseph McGee, who had been serving time for abusing nine lazy Nazi prisoners in Europe. His case had become celebrated in the press. Through Congressional efforts he had been released, restored to the ranks, returned to his Worcester home, where he was greeted by his sobbing sister, made a town hero.

No Escape. But to the Ft. Harrison prisoners Private McGee was just another, if slightly luckier, guy. Cried they: "If McGee got out, why shouldn't we?" When bewhiskered Colonel Peyton C. Winlock, post commander, tried to quell the riot with dignity and authority, someone let fly a boulder which caught him on the back of the head. Dazedly he retired. Fires burst out in two widely separated buildings: a barracks and the infirmary. Four Indianapolis fire companies were summoned to help firemen control a conflagration, spread by a brisk breeze.

Prisoners, dodging around the landscaped grounds, tried to skin under the double rows of high barbed-wire fences. Finally, guards blazed away with submachine guns.

That ended the affair. Next day, officials counted the casualties: one guard shot and killed, probably by a ricocheting bullet (none of the prisoners was armed, the Army said); a city fireman dead from a heart attack; three prisoners wounded; six others injured, including Colonel Winlock; nine buildings destroyed by fire. No prisoner, the Army said, escaped.

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