Death Before Dinner

While Burma's devout Premier Thakin Nu prayed for peace at a Buddhist altar, his government's drive to end civil strife had cut down and scattered the fierce Karen rebels (TIME, June 5). Recently, the government got word that insurgent Karen "Premier" Saw Ba U Gyi was hiding out near the Siam border.

Ten days ago government troops waded neck-deep through muddy waters to close in on Gyi's hideaway hut. The rebel leader was getting ready for dinner; the troops heard him urging his cook to hurry with a duck curry. The government men called on the rebel to surrender. Gyi answered with a blast from a U.S. carbine. When the gun battle was over, the Karen chief lay dying with bullets in his head and chest. "A drop of water," he begged of his captors. "There's no water here, sir," replied a government officer politely. A few minutes later, Gyi, London-educated lawyer and once the leader of 15,000 troops, was dead.

This week Thakin Nu's government announced that it had arrested and imprisoned famed Dr. Gordon S. (Burma Surgeon) Seagrave on suspicion of aiding Burmese rebels. For a quarter-century the medical missionary, born of American parents in Burma, educated at Johns Hopkins, had fought a one-man war against illness in the Burma jungles. During the Japanese war, he organized a front-line medical service for U.S., British and Chinese troops, trekked out of Burma with U.S. General Joseph Stilwell, marched back again when the Japanese were driven out. During the country's fierce postwar civil strife, he continued to operate his hospital at Namkham. Last September rebel forces took Namkham. Government troops eventually drove them out. Thakin Nu's government said it suspected that the American doctor had helped some of the rebels to escape.

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