Sad Exchange

Eight green, tightly sealed, Russian-built trucks, driven by Chinese wearing surgical masks, rolled south into the U.N.'s white, neat reception center in Korea's demilitarized zone. A North Korean major, dapper in black boots and gold epaulets, shook hands with a U.S. major, stiffly announced: "We have 200 bodies; 193 of them are American remains, seven are unknown." The U.N. and the Communists had begun carrying out one of the armistice provisions--exchange of war dead.

The Communists are returning 4,011 U.N. dead. The U.N. is handing over 14,-61 enemy dead (2,154 Chinese, 9,655 North Koreans, 2,252 unknown). It was a grim job and would continue to be: all U.S. bodies would be examined in laboratories in Japan, and identifying marks checked against records, to make sure that the Communists had not pulled any funny business.

One U.S. stretcher-bearer, sweating and tired after more than two hours of unloading, checking and reloading, complained: "What a hell of a job--why don't they just let 'em be?" A colonel gently explained: "It's for the folks back home. Even if there's nothing left but a few bones, they have the right to have them."

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