National Affairs: The Shame & Glory . . .

Navy Chaplain Otto Sporrer had been with the Marines long enough to decide that no one else is quite so good a fighting man as a marine, had confirmed his conclusion in Korea. Like many another serviceman, he also had some white-hot observations to make on the inadequacies of fighting men in other outfits. Unlike most, Chaplain Sporrer, a Roman Catholic priest, got his accusations into print in an unsigned article (title: "The Shame and Glory of Korea") in the California newsmagazine Fortnight. Last week copies of Fortnight began popping up all over the Pentagon; most of them were being exultantly waved by officers of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Music with Meals. As chaplain of the 1st Marines, Sporrer saw some of the bitterest fighting in Korea, shared the misery of the marines in their bloody, icy, splendid retreat from the Chosen Basin. There he built up his grievances against Army officers whom he accused of incompetence and claimed were "corrupted with a luxurious love of the comforts of life as well as with the lack of courage, bravery and interest in men that are expected . . ." He charged that supplies of such things as "delicate crackers, cookies, cheeses, also vast quantities of beer" being hauled to the front made "necessary transportation difficult." Said he bitterly: "[At] General Almond's headquarters in Hungnam, Korea—the X Corps headquarters—the Officers' Mess consisted of a nice warmed building in which the food was served in plates, well cooked. There were waiters and an orchestra was available for music. Outside in the bitter cold, long lines of enlisted men stood in order to receive a little heated can of C-rations. Those long lines took three hours to feed."

Chaplain Sporrer had more serious charges to make. During the Korean fighting, he said, many Army officers took leave "without a pass and without orders" to hitch rides on planes back to Japan to visit their families over weekends. On one occasion, he declared, 160 Army officers who had no right to be away from their outfits were picked up in Tokyo.

Afraid to Fire. At the Battle of No Name Ridge, according to Sporrer, an Army battalion on the right flank of the 5th Marines flatly refused to deliver supporting fire because it was afraid it would draw return fire from the enemy. On another occasion, he said, four Army tank crews deserted their tanks and fled by foot when another tank was knocked out by two enemy antitank guns.

Asked by California's Senator William Knowland for comment on the article, the Army at first prepared a blistering denial, point by point. But Major General Floyd Parks, Army Information chief, quashed the reply, wrote instead to Knowland that the Army considered the charges ill-considered and irresponsible, would not reply to them. It was a decision that did the Army credit: Padre Sporrer, a lieutenant commander in the regular Navy, had taken a course that would have scandalized all but the most pop-eyed columnists; there was no point in letting the incident blow up into an interservice scandal.