Back Pay for Turncoats

Among the most painful Panmunjom problems in working out an armistice to the Korean war was the disposition of war prisoners. The solution, finally reached in the summer of 1953, was to leave the choice of returning to his homeland up to each P.W. Among the Chinese and North Koreans held in the U.N. prison camps, 22,000 decided not to go home. Among American P.W.s, only 21 opted to live in Red China. Among them were Otho G. Bell, William A. Cowart and Lewie W. Griggs--and they had compelling reasons to stay with Communism. As a prisoner, Bell had publicly proclaimed that U.S. officers had ordered him to kill women and children, that President Harry S. Truman was a warmonger, and that he would gladly run a tank over the President's body. Cowart had boasted that he hated America and had accused the U.S. of germ warfare. Griggs toadied to his captors by calling them "comrades" and won prison favors through anti-American broadcasts and articles.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court found that Turncoats Bell, Cowart and Griggs, who had gamboled about Communist China for 18 months before changing their minds and returning to the U.S., were entitled to their U.S. Army pay from their capture until their dishonorable discharges. In January 1954, while all 21 turncoats were still in Redland, Defense Secretary Charles Wilson ordered the Army to give them dishonorable discharges. Normally, such a discharge is given only by court-martial, not by administrative decree. The total amount of back pay due Bell, Cowart and Griggs as a result of last week's Supreme Court decision: $9,256.

The court unanimously agreed that the three turncoats had "behaved with utter disloyalty to their comrades and to their country." But like it or not, the law was clear. Said the court: "In the armed forces, as everywhere else, there are good men and rascals, courageous men and cowards, honest men and cheats. But a soldier who has not received punishment from a duly constituted court-martial is entitled to the statutory pay . . . however ignoble a soldier he may be."

But Bell, Cowart and Griggs had little cause for celebration. All have lived miserably since their return. Bell now dwells in a small house trailer with his wife and four children near Olympia, Wash., earns $1.70 an hour in a Christmas tree nursery. Cowart was last reported working as a dishwasher in Alabama after being fired from jobs in a Cleveland restaurant and as a magazine salesman and truck driver in Texas and Oklahoma when employers learned of his past. Griggs, after getting a sociology degree from Texas' Stephen F. Austin State College and trying to peddle a book on his experiences, now lives with his mother near Jacksonville, Texas. And one of the trio's lawyers, Robert E. Hannon of Castro Valley, Calif., noted that legal costs will eat up nearly all of the pay won by the turncoats. Said Hannon: "They will receive damn little."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.