A Slip in the River

In the warm summer evening, the kids gathered under the scrub oak and jack pine on the west bank of the Wisconsin River and began to warm up an old-fashioned Ukrainian songfest. All of them (aged 7 to 20) were the sons and daughters of Ukrainian refugees living around Chicago. As dedicated members of a patriotic American-Ukrainian group called the Ukrainian Boy and Girl Scouts (no kin to the National Boy and Girl Scouts), they had looked forward all through the city's hard winter to the annual scout camp near Mauston, Wis.

While his pals sang, young George Senyk, 15, quietly slipped away. His counselors had designated him a "victim" for a training exercise. His orders were to wade to a small island some 400 yards off the river shore and "act like I was sick" until senior scouts arrived to save him. But George discovered that the river--shallow enough when the counselors had tested it that morning--had risen dangerously. Its swift current was washing a tricky pattern of gulleys and holes in the sandy bottom. A weak swimmer, he wisely decided to wade ashore and hunt up another, safer ford, farther upstream.

Back at the camp, whistles suddenly skirled. The exercise was on. When the "rescue" party reached the designated ford and found no sign of George, the scout commanders assumed he had al ready reached the island and was waiting for help. Group Commander Rostyslaw Boykowycz, 20, halted his scouts and asked nonswimmers to raise their hands.

None did. Boykowycz then tied a clothesline around his waist and stepped off into the frigid water. Clinging tightly to the line, 17 shivering scouts followed him.

Ten yards from the island, Boykowycz stepped into a hole and lost his footing. He slipped under and was swept downstream. Behind him, scrambling for footholds or handholds, the entire line was washed into deep water. Some panicked. By the time Boykowycz regained his footing and helped other counselors drag survivors ashore, six scouts had drowned. But their absence was not noted until the bedraggled bunch had been assembled on the shore for roll call.

"It was an operation that might have been questionable for the U.S. Marines," said Mauston District Attorney Roland Vieth. It was also an operation that had destroyed the pleasures of their new homeland for the bereaved parents. Peter Kurylak, whose lost twelve-year-old, Orest, had been born in a German D.P. camp, spoke for all of them: "I did not send my boy to the Army. I sent him to camp to relax, to get away from the city and the traffic. Twelve years I was working for that one son I had. I drove him to school when he was little. I went over at noon to see how he played, what he did. I wanted him in camp so he wouldn't see the gangs, the boys his age smoking. And now he is dead."

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