The Returncoats

On Jan. 23, 1954, 21,814 Chinese and North Koreans decided not to return to Communism and 21 American soldiers turned their backs on the U.S. In a grey drizzle one afternoon this week three . of the U.S. turncoats walked a path by the Lowu railroad bridge into Hong Kong and the free world.

First out was Otho G. Bell, 24, of Hillsboro, Miss., a round-faced little man in a poorly cut fawn-grey cotton suit; next came William A. Cowart, 22, of Dalton, Ga., a hulking figure with dirty white pants shoved into high Korean cavalry boots; last was Lewis W. Griggs, 22, of Neches, Texas, a tall, thin, preoccupied youth, carrying the only luggage of the three: a bundled-up raincoat and a pair of brown shoes dangling by their laces.

They were met by H. V. McCreton, British immigration officer. He did not shake hands, sternly explained that they were "prohibited immigrants," permitted to pass through Hong Kong, not welcome to stay.

Their strange political journeyings had deep roots. All three were born to the bleak Depression South. Their families were poor, their lives unhappy, their world warped. Bell's father bragged that "I could always scare him into anything"; Griggs ran away, eventually joined the Army because of a school-bus teasing about a girl friend. Bell spent three years in the eighth grade; when Cowart wrote a Communist-line letter from the Communist prison camp about McCarthyism and McCarranism. one of his teachers said: "How much it would have gratified us when he was in school to have known that he could even identify national figures." Cowart was in the Army at 15, Griggs and Bell at 17.*

The three were captured in Korea and easily gave in to the Communists. While many other prisoners as young and as poorly equipped for an ideological war resisted or died, the three turned on their country, volunteered to make propaganda broadcasts. Cowart and Griggs turned on their buddies, became informers.

When they chose Communism, Cowart danced a jig of joy, but after seven months of stern indoctrination his joy turned to disillusion. Instead of getting the university courses the Communists promised, the three were sent to labor on collective farms in drought-scarred Honan Province. As Cowart tells it, they rebelled, refused to work, made trouble and thus earned their freedom.

The status of the three is unclear, even to the U.S. Government. They told consular officials in Hong Kong that they had not denationalized themselves by voting in Chinese elections or serving in the armed forces. From authorities in Hong Kong they got one-way travel permits and third-class tickets aboard the President Cleveland, bound for San Francisco. When the 21 chose Communism, Defense Secretary Wilson had ordered them dishonorably discharged without court-martial, an unprecedented and possibly illegal move that has yet to be tested in court. Under truce-agreement guarantees, they can never be prosecuted for their choice. But they may have to stand trial for crimes in prison, along with hundreds of other returned "progressive" P.W.'s.

Relieved to be out of Communist China at any cost, the three are reconciled to future trials. Said Cowart, with a political education born of bitter experience: "I would sooner have Hitler come back than have Communism. Hitler only destroyed the body, but Communism destroys the mind. The society of China is built on fear--fear of each man for the other."

*Their background was strikingly typical of the 21. In her book 21 Stayed, Reporter Virginia Pasley reveals that 18 grew up in poverty, 16 came from small towns or rural communities, 17 did not finish high school, 20 were Regular Army volunteers, 16 had an average IQ or less, 15 were 21 or younger when captured, 11 lost their fathers when very young.

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