Panic Under Fire

One day last July, Lieut. Leon A. Gilbert, Negro company commander in the U.S. 25th Division, dug in on a hillside position near Sangju with orders to hold at all costs. From three sides, wave upon wave of enemy fire from mortars and whinnying burp guns splattered and rolled over his position. Two hours later, Lieut. Gilbert and 15 of his men were found wandering aimlessly 1,200 yards to the rear. Ordered to move up, he refused, mumbled that he had been ambushed and cut off, and that he had a wife and children to consider.

His court martial for "misbehavior before the enemy" was swift and crushing. After a three-day trial at a command post 200 yards behind the front lines, Leon Gilbert became the first U.S. soldier in Korea sentenced to die for panicking under fire.

When the Army's Judicial Council in Washington upheld the conviction, Lieut. Gilbert planned an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. His trial had not been unfair, just incomplete. Important defense witnesses had not been permitted to leave their foxholes to testify. His eight judges, all white, had disregarded the report from three Army doctors, one a psychiatrist, who found him suffering from acute battle fatigue and "unable to adhere to the right" (Gilbert had collapsed in Italy as a combat officer during World War II, had been reassigned to rear-area duty). Most important, Gilbert felt that he had been tried illegally under Article of War No. 75, which provides for the death penalty only "if committed in time of war." Congress, by joint resolution in 1947, officially ended World War II so far as a number of statutes, including Article 75, were concerned. Since the U.S. was not officially at war in Korea, Gilbert's lawyer argued, the prisoner should not be sentenced under this Article.

Last week President Truman, following long-established precedent,* commuted the sentence to 20 years at hard labor and dishonorable discharge. Said Lieut. Gilbert, still hoping to appeal: "It was very good to know that I am not going to be executed, but 20 years is a long time to be guilty. I was a very sick man that day."

* No soldier was shot for refusing to obey an order in World War II, though 142 were executed for other crimes.

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