Army & Navy: Nazi Bent

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Dale Maple is a tall, quick-witted young man with a ruddy face and ready grin. Covered with scholastic honors from San Diego High at 16, he later went to Harvard. There he was bounced out of a German club for singing Nazi hymns, out of the R.O.T.C. for Nazi sympathies. The FBI looked him over, turned a fishy eye on him, but all was forgiven when Harvard-man Maple enlisted in the Army.

Private Maple was finally detailed to Colorado's Camp Hale, where some German prisoners of war were confined. As might have been expected, Maple struck up a friendship with two of the superrace. One Tuesday morning he reported for sick leave.

Several days later, south of the Mexican border, immigration officials picked up three men in U.S. Army uniforms. One of them turned out to be Maple. The others were his Nazi friends, who were on their way by some "underground," they hoped, to Germany. Maple, according to FBI officials, was on his way with them; he preferred the German Government.

Round-faced Sergeant Heinrich Kikillus, 32, and hard-faced Sergeant Erhard Schwichtenberg, sometime members of Rommel's hard-boiled Afrika Korps, were held as witnesses. Their punishment will not be hard. Private Maple, of the U.S.

Army, was held for a court-martial. The crime with which he is charged: treason, for which the top punishment is death.