BURMA: Partial Cure

In the wilds of northern Burma last. week, 148 Chinese officers and men, and two young wives, marched down a trail to a prearranged meeting point in a cleared space hacked out of the jungle.

Most of them were healthy and spring-legged, though lean; but some had malaria, tuberculosis or hookworm. In the clearing they were met and saluted by members of a four-nation supervisory team—Siam, Burma. Nationalist China, the U.S. After medical examination, the first lot of evacuees were flown to Formosa.

This marked a partial healing, which may become total, of a sore spot that has troubled southeastern Asia for four years: the presence of 7,000 to 9.000 (Burma says 12,000) Nationalist Chinese troops .and hangers-on in northern Burma. After Burmese protests in the U.N.. the General Assembly backed the Rangoon government, and an agreement was negotiated to bring out some 2,000 of the alien guests with their unit commanders. Last week’s evacuees were the first installment.

The commander of the 148 said that the remainder who would come out in the next three or four weeks were the real core of the fighting men, who still felt bound to obey Formosa’s orders. (Chiang Kai-shek’s government has agreed to outlaw any who refuse to leave.) Spry, 70-year-old William J. (“Wild Bill”) Donovan, wartime chief of the OSS and now U.S. Ambassador to Siam, was on hand for the first processing in the jungle. “I wouldn’t have missed this for anything,” said Wild Bill.