The Undesirables

The U.S. Army stuck to its story that statistics show no increase in G.I. crimes in West Germany. But last week accounts of violence by U.S. troops filled the German press. Items:

P: In Bamberg seven G.I.s were arrested, charged with the rape of a 15-year-old German schoolgirl. The city council called for the removal of all U.S. troops from the city (pop. 76,000).

P: In Munich, where a G.I. clubbed a young bricklayer to death in front of his 18-year-old bride, 50 riot-squad cars prowled the streets, and residential areas were placed off limits to G.I.s.

P: In Bavaria the ministerial council ordered its 600-man reserve riot police to patrol G.I. trouble spots throughout the province "in view of permanent excesses and some grave crimes" of U.S. troops.

For the past eleven years, the G.I. has been remarkably popular in West Germany, and the German press, on the whole, restrained in its treatment of G.I. lapses. This era of good feeling was now in jeopardy. "Gangsters and sex maniacs who still today believe they can treat our wives and daughters as game are undesired here," editorialized the sober official gazette of Rhineland-Palatinate.

For the second time in three weeks, U.S. Ambassador James Bryant Conant apologized to West German Foreign Minister Dr. Heinrich von Brentano for G.I. misbehavior. Stung by German charges of "helpless excuses," U.S. European Commander General Henry I. Hodes ordered a midnight curfew for West Germany's 150,000 G.I.s, promised to weed out "misfits and lawbreakers" from U.S. units. Some Army commanders are inclined to blame the increase in serious violence on the Army's much-ballyhooed new "Operation Gyroscope," whereby entire units, up to divisions, trade duty stations. Formerly, fresh groups of young draftees went into old units, where they benefited from the restraining influence of veteran troops.

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