Seatmates on Flight 321

Sierra Leone last week got its fifth government in a week, which sets a new record even for restless Africa. The change took place while British United Airways Flight 321 from London to Freetown bore homeward Lieut. Colonel Ambrose Patrick Genda, 39, who had been summoned from his United Nations diplomatic post to head a new military junta, which had overthrown Army Commander David Lansana, who had arrested Prime Minister Siaka Stevens, who had been named to replace Prime Minister Sir Albert Margai, whose government apparently lost last fortnight's elections.

In the seat beside Genda was another of the nation's handful of lieutenant colonels, Andrew Terence Juxon-Smith, 34, who had been attending a British military staff school at the time of the coups. "I gave him what advice I could from my own little mind," Juxon-Smith reported. "As far as I was concerned, he was boss." No longer, as far as the junta was concerned, though. Shortly after Flight 321 took off from London, the officers in Freetown changed their minds about Genda, and when the plane made a refueling stop in the Canary Islands, they got through to him by telephone. They told him to get off the plane and stay in the Canaries. The new boss of Sierra Leone: Andrew Terence Juxon-Smith, who now could give advice to everybody.

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