The Seven Hostages

Over a meadow and into Barnau, a small German town hard by the Czechoslovak border, jounced a U.S. Army weapons carrier one evening last week, bearing seven off-duty medics of the 186th Field Artillery Batallion. On the main street the truck halted, while Captain Jack M. Davis cautiously asked townspeople about the exact location of the border; he was anxious not to wander over it.

An hour later, after dusk and fog had settled in over Barnau, a West German border guard on routine patrol found the weapons carrier parked a bare six feet from the border. The G.I.s were nowhere in sight. "Neither a shot nor a passionate discussion" had been heard, the border guard reported. The passionate discussion came next day. Usually, unarmed strays from either side are herded back without argument. But this time a Czech major said that his government would swap the Americans for three Czechoslovak forestry workers who had fled to Germany seeking asylum on June 30. The Communists appeared hotly anxious to get the three Czechs back.

The U.S. State Department got off an angry protest to Prague, demanding the immediate release of Captain Davis and his men. Czechoslovakia replied that the seven Americans were spies. Nonetheless, the State Department remained cautiously optimistic. Mrs. Davis, the wife of the captain, was not so easily consoled.

Sobbed she: "I don't want to wait as long as Mrs. Vogeler."

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