Word: sporrer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...California on duty in San Diego, Chaplain Sporrer said only that "military authorities" had ordered him to keep quiet. The Navy had also sent him a letter of admonition, which is tougher than a letter of caution, but a notch nicer than a letter of reprimand...
With creaking of caissons and clattering of brass, the Army wheeled up to the firing line and took aim at Chaplain Otto Sporrer, U.S.N. The chaplain, a lieutenant commander who was at Chosin Reservoir with the Marines, came home to accuse the Army in Korea of being poorly led, its officers softened by luxury, and its men, at one point, guilty of cowardice (TIME, April 2). Countered General Matthew Ridgway in a report to the Pentagon last week: "The specific allegations which could be checked in this theater have been disproved in their entirety . . . [Chaplain Sporrer] has slandered the reputation...
...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...
...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...