Over the Hill

U.S. Army Recruits Clarence R. Hill and George R. Jones had an ungovernable weakness for dice, whisky and buxom frauleins. After three years of service they held the Army's lowliest rank. When they returned to their company in December after their latest trip over the hill (the second AWOL for Hill, the fourth for Jones), their commanding officer clamped them under quarters arrest at Straubing, Bavaria. Incensed at such unfeeling treatment, they broke out and vanished again. This time they had higher adventure and deeper trouble than they bargained for.

German authorities reported that they had been arrested by Czech police for illegally crossing the border, and were being held in jail behind the Iron Curtain. U.S. officials were refused the right to visit them. The U.S. embassy at Prague protested repeatedly, and its protests were either ignored or evaded. Three months went by before the Czech government made a terse announcement: Hill and Jones were being held for espionage. Last week the Czechs broke their silence again with an even more chilling report. The pair had been secretly tried as spies, had been sentenced to long terms at hard labor--ten years for Jones, twelve years for Hill.

Astounded U.S. officials reflected that neither Hill nor Jones could speak a word of Czech, probably wouldn't know a military secret from a comic book, and had blundered across the border without entry papers; it seemed almost certain that the Czechs were simply using them as a way of getting even. Since the first of the year, a U.S. military commission at Munich had sentenced a series of Czech spies to long prison terms.

Secretary of State Dean Acheson expressed the "grave concern" of the U.S. Government, and the State Department finally wrung from the Czech foreign office a promise that U.S. officials could interview the imprisoned soldiers. A hardbitten old sergeant from the pair's old outfit, the 6th Armored Cavalry Regiment, voiced his own position more succinctly. Said he: "If them lunkheads is spies, I'm Mata Hari!"

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