Two Who Stayed Home

Orders is orders in the Army. That hoary fiat has produced its measure of anguish and hilarity over the years. Its seriocomic aspects surfaced last week in the court-martial of a Viet Nam-bound private who said "I won't go," and didn't, and the troubles of a private first class on furlough who was told to await new orders, and did--for 18 unregimented months.

Happy Tears. Ronald Lockman, 23, the private who refused to go to war, announced his intentions at a San Francisco news conference the day he was scheduled to be processed for shipment, Sept. 13. "My fight is back home in the Philadelphia ghettos where I was born and raised," said Lockman, a Negro and a member of the militant leftist W.E.B. DuBois Club. "I will not go 10,000 miles away to be a tool of the oppressors of the Vietnamese people." A day later, Lockman was hustled to the stockade, after refusing to board a bus with 100 other soldiers bound for the air hop to Saigon.

Last week a six-officer general-court-martial board, four of them Viet Nam war veterans, turned aside attempts by Lockman's attorneys to argue that the order was unlawful because the war is "illegal and unjust." The board took eleven minutes to find Lockman guilty, 20 minutes to agree on a sentence of 30 months hard labor, loss of pay and dishonorable discharge.

"Thank you God, thank you God!" shrieked Lockman's fiancee after hearing the relatively light sentence. Lockman, fully prepared to get the five-year maximum, shouted: "I'm not crying because I'm sad. I'm crying because I'm happy!" After the automatic review of the case at Sixth Army headquarters, Lockman's attorneys plan appeals.

By contrast, the Army's orders-is-orders syndrome led to comedy of the absurd in the case of Pfc. Joe A. Smith.

After completing engineer training at Fort Hood, Texas, Smith, also 23, went home to Brownsville, Calif., on a 30-day leave in November 1965. At leave's end he phoned Fort Hood for further instructions, was told to report to Oakland Army Terminal Dec. 28 for shipment to Thailand. Then, days later, he received a telegram telling him to disregard the reporting date and await new orders "to follow." Obeying orders to the letter, Smith settled back to wait, meanwhile picking up a $130-a-week logging job. His wife Glenda Fay continued to receive her monthly $95.20 allotment check.

Crazy like a Fox. By last June, having technically served his two-year hitch, Smith pulled on his Army duds and hopped a bus for Oakland, where he demanded his discharge. "I saw this sergeant, and he didn't know what to do with me, so he took me to see this lieutenant," deadpans Smith. "The officer kind of went crazy. 'Don't you know there's a war on?' he asked me. 'Don't you watch television?' Sure, I said."

After months of waiting for the Army's decision, Smith finally got an A.C.L.U. lawyer who threatens to take the case to federal court unless Smith is honorably discharged. The Army considers those 18 months to be "bad time" and has put Smith on short pay--$20 since June to recoup the allotments his wife received during his absence. Glenda Fay Smith meanwhile is still receiving her allotments. A runner at Sixth Army headquarters, Smith has recently been given a battery of physical and mental tests. Though the Army is mum about the results, one officer cracked that Smith was "crazy like a fox." Smith sums it all up with innocent aplomb. "I talked to the sergeant major once, and he said, 'Well, it wasn't an authorized absence.' But it wasn't unauthorized either."

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