SCAP: The General's Candy

SCAP headquarters, in Tokyo's Dai Ichi Building, is policed by members of General Matthew Bunker Ridgway's Honor Guard—strapping six-footers, starched and polished, who stand their appointed watches day & night at the entrance and in the gleaming marble corridors. In the dead of night last week, Honor Guard Corporal Linwood C. Smith, a Purple Heart veteran of nine months in Korea, took a ten-minute break, wandered into Ridgway's outer office. There he saw a box of Whitman's Sampler chocolates. Knowingly and willfully, Corporal Smith did then & there remove and eat five pieces of candy—four nougats and one mint—and he gave four more pieces to two other Honor Guards, Pfcs. John King and Herbert Branch.

Next morning, when Ridgway's military secretary Chief Warrant Officer William McCleary arrived and saw the pilfered box, he was speechless for 30 seconds. Then Mr. McCleary reported to Matt Ridgway, and the sparks began to fly. Ridgway called the Honor Guard's captain on the carpet, ordered him to 1) search out the culprits, 2) get rid of them. Faced with the prospect of discipline for the whole company unless they confessed, Smith, King and Branch confessed.

It was not just ordinary candy; it had been intended as a gift for junketing Cinemactors Paul Douglas and Jan Sterling. The three culprits were reduced one grade in rank, but SCAP relented and allowed them to stay in the Guard.

Pfc. Smith was relieved but shaken. "This cuts my pay about $17 a month," he said, "and besides, they've taken my Good Conduct Medal away from me."