Word: kilian
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...former ballroom of Bad Nauheim's plush Park Hotel, the most shocking Army scandal of World War II reached its climax last week. Grim and flushed, his green eyes squinting belligerently through steel-rimmed glasses, Colonel James A. Kilian, for 26 months commandant of the notorious 10th Reinforcement Depot at Lichfield (England), heard an Army court-martial pronounce its verdict: not guilty of "knowingly" condoning the brutalities practiced in Lichfield's prison stockade, but guilty of "permitting" them. The sentence: a $500 fine, an official reprimand...
This wrist-slap satisfied no one but the Army's brasshats, who were only too glad to see the whole unsavory mess over & done with. The prosecution privately argued that the sentence was ludicrously mild. The defense insisted that the court had actually found Defendant Kilian guilty of neglect of duty, a charge not filed against him. Said one sarcastic G.I. spectator: "We're going to take up a collection to pay the poor guy's fine...
Colonel James A. Kilian, former Lichfield commandant and the first higher-up arraigned, threw the court into uproar with contentious motions. He had appealed to President Truman for an inquiry into the trials. He called General Joseph T. McNarney, the Army's boss in Europe, to the stand. Higher-ups were going to be hard...
Such is the background to the current trials at Bad Nauheim, Germany, where Kilian, several lower ranking officers, and enlisted guards are on trial for alleged mistreatment of GI prisoners. Sergeant Judson Smith, chief non-commissioned officer at the guardhouse, received three years at hard labor and a dishonorable discharge. Other enlisted men are serving prison sentences of lesser length. And last week a first lieutenant, first officer to be tried and the man alleged to have ordered the beatings, heard his sentence-admonition and a fine of $250, or approximately one month...
...striving to increase its enlistment totals, such an example of army justice can hardly be called a recruiting inducement. With the teen-age draft bill still under debate in Congress, it cannot conceivably strengthen the Army's case. What the courts-martial board decides, in the case of Colonel Kilian, now on trial, is yet to be seen. But those who saw some hope for democratization of the army with the apprehension of the top-ranking officers of the Tenth Depot have since realized their sadness, in observing the inequalities of the punishment meted out thus far, that the military...