Aggressive Campaign

Three months after they skipped ship in Japan to show their opposition to the war, America's most celebrated Viet Nam deserters--four young sailors from the carrier Intrepid--finally found comfortable berths in a hospitable Sweden last week. Given asylum on "humanitarian" rather than political grounds by Sweden's Aliens Commission, the sailors--John Barilla, age 20, Richard D. Bailey, 19, Craig W. Anderson, 20, and Michael A. Linder, 19--marked their farewell to arms by lifting champagne glasses in toasts to peace, expanding on their views before ever-present bands of Swedish and foreign reporters and cameramen and thoroughly enjoying the lionizing adulation of Stockholm's artistic establishment.

While the Intrepid crewmen basked in the limelight, Sweden also accepted three other antiwar deserters from the 200,000-man U.S. Army in Germany and examined the pleas for asylum from several other G.I.s. By week's end at least 17 American deserters were in Sweden.

Skillful Drumbeating. The spate of defections gave European peace groups considerable satisfaction. Though they boast that they are now recruiting 100 deserters a month, they have until now never been able to produce more than one or two on any single occasion. U.S. Army headquarters in Heidelberg has persistently dismissed their claims, lists no more than 365 missing G.I.s since the late 1940s. In Japan, where the 36,000 American troops are regularly augmented by thousands of G.I.s on R & R (rest and recreation) from Viet Nam, pacifist and peace groups have had no better luck. Indeed, U.S. desertions worldwide, including the Viet Nam command, are running on a par with the Korean War (two per 1,000) and at a rate considerably lower than World War II (six per 1,000).

Still, the peaceniks' skillful drumbeating, such as a recent, largely staged film on French TV about an underground railroad for defecting G.I.s, lends their campaign exaggerated importance. West Germany has a law on the books that expressly forbids the recruitment of U.S. deserters, but the radical German Socialist Student Association regularly penetrates G.I. bars, distributes antiwar tracts and occasionally intercepts U.S. soldiers on maneuvers. Helped by other peace groups, the German organization offers to smuggle disenchanted G.I.s out of the country and to provide forged passports if necessary.

In Paris, where most AWOLs take French leave, the French Communist Party has provided them with cash. A Tokyo group known as Beheiren--the Japan Peace for Viet Nam Committee --offers deserters similar hospitality, demonstrates regularly at U.S. installations and helped get the four Intrepid sailors to the Soviet Union. While the Pentagon does not feel that such activities are a major problem, the U.S. Navy has told the men of the U.S.S. Enterprise to be wary of Beheiren when the nuclear carrier docks in Sasebo this week.

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