The Colliding Colonels

For months the case had rocked Santa Ana, Calif., and the $50,000,000 Army air base there. It had split the town's top social stratum wide open, divided officers on the station into cliques, shaken the loyalties of thousands of cadets in training. Now the feud between Colonel William Abbott Robertson, frosty commanding officer of the base, and Colonel Joseph James Canella, brawny, fun-loving base quartermaster, hit its climax. Colonel Canella was indicted for conspiring to defraud the U.S. Government.

The Quartermaster. Colonel Canella had an unblemished record of 25 years in the Army, 28 letters of commendation from various superiors. No West Pointer. he started his Army career as an ROTC man at the University of Iowa, where he played such violent football that he was dubbed the "Sicilian Assassin." Three days after Pearl Harbor, he arrived at Santa Ana to start building the air base. He liked parties, told cute stories, refereed cadets' football games. Townspeople and cadets liked him.

The C.O. Several months later, Colonel Robertson arrived to take command of the base. A West Pointer, he had been wounded in World War I, retired, recalled for duty for World War II. An elegant disciplinarian, he liked to play polo with cinema people and rich orange growers.

The people of Santa Ana soon found that they could not ask Robertson and Canella to the same parties without awkwardness. So they took sides. So did the other officers--and the cadets, most of whom thought that Canella was a ''swell guy," that Robertson was too severe.

The Showdown. Colonel Robertson heard ugly whispers about the sources of Colonel Canella's income. He investigated and turned his findings over to the FBI. When Colonel Canella appeared for arraignment, he hotly denied his guilt, called himself a victim of "personal persecution." He also slugged a newspaper photographer and chased him across one of Santa Ana's busiest streets.

A Federal grand jury last week indicted two corporations and three prominent local merchants along with Colonel Canella. He was charged with accepting, through an intermediary, more than $7,000 in bribes from civilian jobseekers and purveyors of supplies to the base.

Colonel Canella admitted that his Army career was ''washed up." But he was most worried about the effect of the scandal on his two West Pointer sons, both combat officers overseas.

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