The Boobies

What should Brigadier General Francis T. Dodd have done when the Communist prisoners on Koje Island seized him? An infuriated Pentagon general said privately last week that, as soon as Dodd was in telephone communication with his successor, Brigadier General Charles Colson, he should have said: "Come in and get me. Use all the guns and force you need. If I die, the hell with it." Even if Dodd had made no such demand, the Pentagon man continued, Colson should have sent a force into the compound. Colson and Dodd would have been heroes, although Dodd might also have been a casualty: at any rate the day would have been saved.

Instead, all over the free world last week people were saying that U.S. military men have no more political sense than so many boobies. Red China newspapers screamed that a U.S. general had confessed atrocities. At Tokyo's Haneda airport, General Mark Wayne Clark, the new Far East commander, watched his predecessor, General Matt Ridgway, fly happily off to the U.S., leaving Clark with a mess on his hands. Ample portions of blame had already been meted out to the two squirming brigadiers, Dodd and Colson, but some blame would undoubtedly fall on Ridgway and on the Eighth Army's Van Fleet.

Comes the Bull. After a three-hour telecon talk with the Pentagon, Clark moved to set things to rights. He had already fired Colson as commandant; he now repudiated Colson's concessions as having "no validity whatsoever." Clark sent a tough, Chinese-speaking combat commander, Brigadier General Haydon Lemaire Boatner, to take over on Koje, followed by the battle-seasoned 187th Airborne Regiment, 3,000 men strong.

General Boatner has two nicknames: "Buster" and "the Bull." At 18 he was a Marine Corps private. After World War I, he went to West Point, saw long service in China, and in World War II was chief of staff to General Joseph Stilwell. In the CBI theater he was known as a hard-driving character who spoke his mind. In Korea, as assistant commander of the 2nd Infantry Division, he fought at Heartbreak Ridge. He became Koje's 14th commander in 16 months.

Bull's Problem. He announced his policy was to be "tough but fair." Asked about negotiations with the prisoners, he barked: "Prisoners do not negotiate."

This week U.S. guards were still staying out of the Communist stockades. The prisoners were still displaying flags and signs. The ringleaders from other compounds who had been admitted to compound 76 (where the Dodd abduction occurred) were still there, and refused to leave. If Bull Boatner could rectify those matters without further violence, he would be a very exceptional general indeed.

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