Johnsons JAHRESTAGE - Der Kommentar

Seite/Zeile(n)	Datum/Text
	22. März 1968

900, 9-904, 19	»DIE ARMEE GIBT ... und Plünderei enthalten.« - »Army Helps Police Learn About Riots / by Homer Bigart / Special to the New York Times / Fort Gordon, Ga., March 20 - On a piney knoll some 60 city and state policemen and National Guard officers gathered yesterday to watch the testing of ›nonlethal agents‹ that may be used this summer to disperse riotous mobs in the nation’s cities. It was unseasonably warm, a lazy, hazy Georgia day more conducive to spring fever than to incendiary design. Robins sang, coffee and cookies were served and the post band played ›The Stars and Stripes Forever‹ as the sixth class of the Civil Disobedience Orientation Course climbed out of an Army bus to begin a 20-hour course on the anatomy of a riot. This was the setting for a weekly exercise at the Army’s riot control school, an institution hurriedly conceived a few months ago to teach the grim lessons derived from the Detroit and Newark riots, and from other racial disorders of last summer. Army Manual Revised Each week since early February, a new class of police officers, guardsmen and occasional Secret Service or Federal Bureau of Investigation agents has completed the course, directed by the Army’s Military Police School. [...] Deadly serious, yesterday’s class sat in a covered stand and awaited the demonstration. Out front of the spectators, down a gentle, sandy slope at ranges of 50, 100 and 150 yards were clumps of black silhouettes, representing mobs. These ›mobs‹ were to be assaulted with tear gas hurled at them by foot troops or sprayed on them from a helicopter. First, the members of a class saw a squad of military policemen approach the nearest mob under a protective smoke screen. The squad, an eerie gas-masked apparition, emerged suddenly from the smoke to confront their assailants. Next, the M.P.’s shot off smoke grenades, designed, the instructor explained, for signaling or perhaps just determine wind direction. The grenades came in reds, greens, yellows and violets. Shot off together, their smoke combined in a bilious psychedelic cloud. Wind Direction Vital Wind direction was important, and many in the audience kept a nervous eye on the weather vane, knowing that two types of tear gas, so-called CS and CN, would be demonstrated next. It was recalled that on a previous occasion the stands had emptied suddenly when an errant wind sent a cloud of gas billowing up the slope. CS is the type of tear gas now favored by the Army. It is more devastating on a mob than the gentler CN used by the civilian police. CS, as described by the Army, ›causes an extreme burning sensation, a copious flow of tears, coughing, labored breathing and tightness of the chest, involuntary closing of the eyes, stinging on the moist skin, and sinus and nasal drip.‹ Nausea and mild vomiting may occur if a heavy concentration is used. [...] The high point of the demonstration came when a helicopter swooped over the range, emitting a white cloud of gas that was forced down on the mobs by the downdraft of the rotor blades. Tomorrow the class attends another outdoor show, this one involving a simulated battle between militant civil rights demonstrators and the National Guardsmen. Both the rioters and the Guardsmen are enacted by the Army’s 503rd Military Police Battalion, one of the units that defended the Pentagon against the peace marchers last October. The clash is staged in a Hollywood like mockup of a community called Riotsville, replete with the normal targets of a looting mob - a liquor store, a television and appliance shop, a sporting goods store that sells guns, and a drugstore. ›Baby‹, a firebrand militant portrayed by a 22-year-old Negro sergeant named Bob Franklin, harangues a crowd, charging police brutality. The crowd waves signs denouncing war. One sign reads ›We Shall Overcome‹. Bricks and rocks made out of rubber, but hefty enough to be realistic are thrown at the ›Mayor‹ when he tries to placate the mob. But here comes the National Guard. Using tear gas, bayonets, an armored personnel carrier, and classic antiriot tactics, the troops prevail. ›Baby‹ is seized and taken off in the armored car, a prisoner. The class spends the rest of the study hours in a classroom dominated by a huge table model of a city that presents in miniature not only a slum area but also a downtown district with ›skyscrapers‹, an industrial center, a port area, hospitals, schools, a city hall and critical facilities such as power stations. The class studies problems relating to the defense of these installations, the containment of mobs and the detention of prisoners. [...] The course examines about every conceivable device that might be used by rioters, including sewers and underground storm drains. An instructor warns his class: ›When troops are on a slope or at the bottom of it, dangerous objects can be directed at them such as vehicles, trolleycars, carts, barrels, rocks, liquids and so forth. ›On level ground wheeled vehicles can be driven under their power towards troops, but the drivers can jump out before the vehicles reach their target. This target may be used for breaching roadblocks and barricades. ›In using fire, mobs may set fire to buildings and motor vehicles to block the advance of troops, to create confusion and diversion or to achieve goals of property destruction, looting and sniping. ›Mobs may flood an area with gasoline or oil and ignite it as troops advance into the area. ›They may pour gasoline or oil down a slope toward the troops or drop it from buildings and ignite it. ›They may place charges of dynamite in a building, timed to explode as troops or vehicles are opposite the building, or be exploded ahead of the troops so that the rubble blocks the street. ›They may drive dogs or other animals with explosives attached to their bodies toward the troops. The charges may be exploded by remote control, fuses or a time device.‹ Troops must be trained to ignore taunts, the instructor says. Troops [...] ›must be emotionally prepared for weird mob actions, such as members of the mob screaming and rushing toward them, tearing off their own clothes or deliberately injuring or maiming themselves.‹ But the need for stringent fire discipline is stressed. Only that force necessary to control the situation is to be exercised ›in consonance with our democratic way of life and military teachings.‹ The revised Army manual expected April 1 will contain new sections on the control of arson and looting.« NYT 22.3.1968; s.K. 9, 6f.
900, 11	Homer Bigart - 25.10.1907-16.4.1991, Kriegskorrespondent für die New York Herald Tribune 1942-45; seit 1955 Auslandskorrespondent für die New York Times; Pulitzer-Preis 1945 für seine Berichte über den Krieg im Pazifik.
900, 16	Nationalgarde - s.K. 734, 9.
900, 24f.	Die Sterne und die Streifen immerdar - Anspielung auf den Refrain der Nationalhymne der USA »Stars and Stripes«, auch »The Star-Spangled Banner« genannt: Oh, say does the star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? Sagt an, weht das Sternenbanner noch rein über der Heimat der Tapfren und der Frei’n? Text: Francis Scott Key (1.8.1779-11.1.1843), angeblich durch den Anblick der Flagge über Fort McHenry in Baltimore während der Beschießung am 13./14.9.1814 durch die Briten inspiriert; Melodie nach dem zu der Zeit populären engl. Trinklied »To Anacreon in Heaven«. Das Lied wurde während des Spanisch-Amerikanischen Krieges (1898) zur inoffiziellen Nationalhymne, seit 1916 auf Präsident Wilsons Anweisung bei militärischen Anlässen gespielt und am 3.3.1931 durch Gesetz zur Nationalhymne erklärt; s.K. 1004, 37f.
900, 32	Aufständen von Detroit und Newark - s.K. 9, 6f.
901, 10	Yards - 1 Yard: 0,9144 m.
902, 15	Pentagon - s.K. 24, 17.
904, 20	© by the ... York Times Company - s.K. 116, 25.