Trouble at Koje

In spite of the talk of changes in com mand and improvements, things were still disgracefully out of hand on Koje.

Army Secretary Frank Pace Jr. told a Senate committee that "the entire Army" was "deeply shocked" by the capture of Camp Commander Francis T. Dodd by his prisoners. Both Dodd and Brigadier General Charles F. Colson, who agreed to the compromising ransom terms, were busted to their permanent rank of colonel. To Colson's immediate superior, Brigadier General Paul F. Yount, went a formal "administrative reprimand."

Koje's new boss, Brigadier General Haydon ("The Bull") Boatner, got orders to "obtain uncontested control" of the Red-controlled stockades. He ringed the compounds with tanks, machine guns and infantry, began building smaller, more manageable stockades (500 men to each), into which the prisoners will be dispersed. Two rifle companies of British Commonwealth troops were shipped to Koje, to spread the onus of disciplining the prisoners among as many nations as possible. Koje's 80,000 P.W.s were pinning down a six-nation tank and infantry force almost a division strong.

To Eighth Army Commander General James A. Van Fleet, on Koje to inspect the new precautions, everything looked fine & dandy, as it has all along to him. "I don't think there will be any more trouble," Soldier Van Fleet announced optimistically. "Bull" Boatner thought otherwise. "We can't get into those compounds," he fretted. "We can't take a roll-call. We don't know what they're plotting." But plotting they were:

P: Communist doctors and medical orderlies at Koje hospital staged a sitdown strike for better food, the right to take regular sunbaths, and the removal of South Korean guards. "Damned absurd!" roared General Boatner. He ordered the strikers to report to him; when they balked, he clapped them behind bars.

P: Compound 602 held an elaborate funeral service for a Communist fanatic shot by a U.S. sergeant for resisting search. Shortly after dawn, a P.W. band using beer-can bugles, bamboo flutes and drums made of oilcans struck up an eerie cacophony. Twelve Chinese carrying flowers made of G.I. toilet paper shuffled out of the compound to the camp cemetery. Boatner approved the procession; in return, the Communists agreed to remove insulting anti-U.N. slogans from the barbed wire fence.* In Compound 76, the scene of General Dodd's imprisonment, unidentified corpses, presumably anti-Communists murdered by Red ringleaders, were cremated in a funeral pyre, 40 ft. long and 6 ft. wide.

P: Across the bay at Pusan, U.S. infantrymen were called out to suppress an ugly hospital riot in Enclosure 10, which the Eighth Army rated a model camp. Most of its 8,000 prisoners had theoretically been screened as antiCommunists. A bunch of Red troublemakers were ordered to come out of one compound; when they refused, U.S. troops, backed by four tanks, were sent in to fetch them. The Reds hurled spears and barbed-wire flails; the Americans retaliated with tear gas and concussion grenades which stun but do not kill. Fiercest fighters of all were 600 Red amputees who hopped about on their stumps, using their crutches as clubs. Nine G.I.s were wounded; one Red was killed, 84 wounded.

Since the riots began on Koje last September, 102 Reds have been killed by U.N. guards; these were the deaths that Red propaganda made the most of. But more who lay dead--including those in the 689 prisoner graves at Koje--were victims of the civil war inside the stockades.

* But late last week a P.W. working party, under armed guard, was still parading its North Korean flag as it went out to work.

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