First Trial

Maria Wrobel, small, fiftyish, wore a stylish black hat and real silk stockings.

Friedel Souvignier, who is in her middle 40s, sported a blue turban. Blond, 18-year-old Marianne Souvignier's plump legs were bare. Pretty Inger Schoneneberg, 20, wore a black hat on her black hair and a plaid sports skirt. The four trooped nervously into a restaurant on Kornelimun-ster's town square.

The four were defendants last week in the first military court held by the U.S. Army in Germany. Against all of them was the same charge: re-entering their homes, which had been declared out-of-bounds because they were close to military installations.

An American officer, explaining the difference between the U.S. Army's policy toward civilians in Belgium and Germany, had said: "In Belgium we ask them; in Germany we tell them." Now Vienna-born Captain Kurt Walitschek, of the U.S. Army, presiding at the summary military court trial of the four women, was prepared to demonstrate that policy.

Witnesses--two MPs--gave their evidence. The women's nattily dressed civilian counsel made no plea, though the women themselves excitedly explained that they had just gone back to their houses to get some clothes. Captain Walitschek listened, found all four guilty, fined them each 2,000 marks ($200) with the alternative of six months in jail. Friedel Souvignier wept, the others protested. The captain was polite but unmoved. He explained to newsmen that he wanted to set an example of severity. This is the way all U.S. Army courts will deal with those Germans who flout its military laws.

Two other Germans were led before Walitschek: 62-year-old Wilhelm Siemens and his nephew, both accused of stealing $2 worth of coal which the U.S. Army had seized. According to the law laid down by General Dwight Eisenhower, the penalty for such a crime may be death. Captain Walitschek referred the case to a higher court.

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