Word: martially
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Marine Court-Martial...
...From military encampments on the Salisbury Plain, Britain moved more troops toward embarkation ports and the eastern Mediterranean. In Paris the Defense Ministry announced appointment of three-star General André Beaufre, an expert on airborne operations, to command a new "Mediterranean force." French newspapers, kicking up a new martial stir over the Suez, reported that air units were grouping at fields near Paris, armor and paratroop forces massing near Algerian ports...
Then came the trial's most surprising performance. Down from Washington to testify in McKeon's behalf came General Randolph McCall Pate, commandant of the Marine Corps and the man who approved the court-martial and, in April, angrily called McKeon's action "deplorable." Tieless and affable, Marine Pate first went out of his way to shake McKeon's hand and murmur "Good luck to you, my boy," before he took the witness stand. If it were up to him, he said haplessly, in answer to "Zuke" Berman's hypothetical question, his only punishment...
Respectful but not intimidated, the seven court-martial officers took seven hours to find Matt McKeon guilty of drinking in barracks and simple negligence in the six deaths. But they cleared him of the more serious charges of "oppression" and culpable negligence. McKeon, the court found, was not drunk the night of the march, nor had he been criminally negligent. McKeon, Zuke Berman, the prosecution and the press took the verdict as clear evidence of a Pate-weight sentence to come. Then, next day, came the stunning blow...
North Carolina's Wilmington Morning Star (circ. 17,866) went to press with a front-page picture of four Marine witnesses in the court-martial of Sergeant Matthew C. McKeon (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). As soon as the paper hit his desk, the editor on duty gulped and stopped the presses. He had failed to notice, in the shadowy impression on the Associated Press mat that supplied the picture, that one of the marines, Private Eugene W. Ervin of Bridgeport, Conn., was a Negro. The deskman met the crisis by ordering a pressman to take hammer and chisel...