Garwood Guilty

"A white Vietnamese"

Robert Garwood dropped out of high school in Indianapolis at the age of 17, joined the Marines and went to Viet Nam as a driver. In 1965, just eleven days before he was due to be reassigned, Private First Class Robert Garwood disappeared near Danang. For almost 14 years he remained in Viet Nam--a prisoner, he claimed. He escaped after slipping a note to a Finnish economist in a Hanoi bar, and in March 1979 Garwood returned to the U.S. Home free, he thought. Other P.O.W.s, however, soon accused Garwood of being a deserter and a traitor, and he was charged with collaborating with the enemy.

Nearly 13 weeks after his trial began, Garwood, now 34, was found guilty last week by a jury of five Viet Nam veterans at Camp Lejeune, N.C. He was convicted of collaboration and of assaulting an American prisoner. Gustav Mehrer, one of the nine former P.O.W.s called by the prosecution, testified that Garwood kept a stack of propaganda leaflets, wore an enemy uniform and held a rifle. Said Mehrer: "His actions were Vietnamese. He would hum and giggle like them. He would squat. He was a white Vietnamese to me."

Defense Attorney John Lowe claimed that Garwood was driven insane by Vietnamese torture and eventually came to identify with his captors. Countered the chief prosecutor, Major Werner Hellmer: "We are not dealing here with insanity, but with a smokescreen."

Garwood faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and forfeiture of $147,000 in back pay, but plans to appeal. He once told a reporter that he was prepared for the worst: "An American prison is better than a Vietnamese prison." qed

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