Shotgun Blast

From French New Caledonia last week came ugly charges against U.S. troops--first time such an indictment has been made officially against U.S. soldiers in this war. Governor Christian Laigret declared that Negro troops have attacked New Caledonia's women "even in the company of their husbands and brothers."

Said the Governor: "The colored troops are the terror of the white women in New Caledonia. Our women are afraid to go out of the house after nightfall, though recently General Lincoln [Major General Rush B. Lincoln, Commander of the Army's forces] took action and the situation is a bit better."

Until half a century ago New Caledonia was a French penal colony. Some 15,000 convicts were dumped on its remote, mountainous shore. The white population today numbers only about 17,000. Some of them have intermarried with the dark-skinned native population.

When France collapsed in 1940 the New Caledonians threw their Vichy governor out and put a Free Frenchman in his place. In March 1942, the U.S. Navy moved into Noumea's magnificent harbor to make it an important base for its South Pacific campaign.

Invasion by Friends.

Noumea, the capital, was rundown, poverty-stricken. The banana-shaped, 250-mile-long island, defended by an ill-armed garrison and ancient cannon, would have dropped like a ripe banana into the hands of the Japs. So the French welcomed U.S. forces, at first. But U.S. forces soon outnumbered the colonists and, with the vanishing of a Jap invasion threat, irritations between the two populations cropped up.

Liquor was scarce and natives bootlegged a poisonous quality of moonshine among U.S. troops. Although New Caledonians have little to sell, outside of ices and soft drinks, a few shopkeepers have profited inordinately at the expense of soldiers & sailors.

U.S. troops on the island have grown bored and homesick despite efforts to amuse them with movies, beer gardens, barbecues. Women are also scarce. Total population of the island is only 55,000, more than half of whom are native Melanesians, with 8,000 Tonkinese and Javanese. But no military authorities would admit, nor could any U.S. observer report, any such generally immoral conditions as the Governor described.

General Lincoln kept silent. Washington, which handles with nervous anxiety any relations with the French, at week's end had no comment to make either.

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