Academy Man

For an officer of the U.S. Navy, and an Annapolis man at that, Lieut, (j.g.) William H. Evans was an odd shipmate. To the men on board the radar picket destroyer Rogers, patrolling Korean waters, he would frequently sound off against the kind of war they were in. He was a bitter partisan in shipboard bull sessions.

A 1948 Academy graduate (last in his class of 410), Evans had resigned his commission after a year to concentrate on a master's degree in foreign relations at the University of Maryland, had returned to duty when the Korean war began.

Last March, Lieut. Evans could contain himself no longer. On the ship's bulletin board, he posted a letter he had received, and dashed off a reply to its author, wealthy Manhattan Importer Alfred Kohlberg, violent critic of U.S. China policy and ammunition handler for Senator Joe McCarthy.

"Keep up the good work," he wrote Kohlberg. "I posted your open letter for all the officers on the ship to read . . . That pro-Soviet . . . Administration of ours and our senile, ignorant Congress would rather have Americans slaughtered than attack Red China . . . Damn the United Nations . . . The Roosevelt-Truman -Acheson -United Nations followers should be loaded on ships and used as shock troops in Korea. God bless Alfred Kohlberg. There are too few like him, though."

Kohlberg sent the letter to every member of Congress (Lieut. Evans had given him permission to publish it). The Navy, getting wind, let out an outraged howl at so blatant a defiance of regulations, convened a Board of Inquiry. Last week the Navy found Lieut. Evans guilty of "grave misconduct" for his abusive language and breach of clearance regulations, stripped him of his commission, and gave him a discharge.

By week's end, ex-Lieut. Evans was back home in Edgewater, Md. "If you are pro-American," he cried angrily, "you have to go underground or else suffer the consequences." Then he enrolled again in the University of Maryland and went back to work on his master's thesis. Title: Truman and Stalin at Potsdam.

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