Republic Saved

Chief of Staff George Catlett Marshall last August discussed a subject which Army men seldom mention in public : the difficulties of defending the Panama Canal.

Said he (to a Senate subcommittee): "It is a terrific task to guarantee that the Canal will remain open while we still permit commercial traffic through it: Yet it is unthinkable that we would suppress commercial traffic. So we always have a hazard there. . . ."What General Marshall had in mind was the danger that some supposedly innocent tanker, tramp steamer or fishing boat on its way through the locks might suddenly turn out to be a floating time bomb. How acute, ever-present and unpredictable that peril is, the Army learned last week when its own transport, the U. S. S. Republic, docked in Panama City.

The Republic was bound from Hawaii to the eastern U. S., via San Francisco and the Panama Canal. Aboard were 1,800 enlisted men, 750 officers, wives and children. One day out of San Francisco, nine days from the Canal, Master-At-Arms Henry F. Dodd sniffed "a strange odor." He followed his nose four decks down, found a 12 -by-18-inch package. In it were two electrical coils, a time mechanism, two quarts of nitroglycerin. Overboard went the dismembered bomb. Henry Dodd said it was timed to go off well out in the Pacific, would have killed all hands aboard.

As General Marshall and the Army guard in the Canal Zone well knew, the next one might be timed to block the Canal.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.