Buddies

At the British military barracks in West Germany's Duisburg back in 1953, there were no closer buddies than handsome, strapping (6 ft. 3 in.) Sergeant Frederick Emmett-Dunne and happy-go-lucky little (5 ft. 1 in.) Sergeant Reginald Watters. If Sergeant Emmett-Dunne seemed overly interested in Sergeant Walters' pretty German wife Maria, an ex-nightclub singer, nobody seemed to mind less most of the time than Sergeant Watters himself. Nobody seemed to mind less, that is, until the night of Nov. 30, 1953. That night Sergeant Emmett-Dunne and another soldier found Sergeant Watters hanging by the neck from a bannister in one of the barracks.

Emmett-Dunne himself broke the sad news to Maria, and helped assuage her grief. When the official verdict of suicide came through, barrack gossips were quick to blame the suicide on the close friendship of the dead Walters' buddy and wife. But an official army investigator named Sergeant Frank Walters was bothered by the suicide verdict. It was Walters' simple opinion that cocky Sergeant Watters was just not the suicidal type.

Remembered Suspicion. In the time-honored manner of fictional detectives, Sergeant Walters filed away his suspicions for future reference, finished his hitch in the army, and eventually joined the London police force. Early last summer, he learned that Sergeant Frederick Emmett-Dunne and the widow Watters had been married, seven months after Waiters' death. His suspicions were re-aroused; he took them over to army intelligence.

The result was a hurried order to British headquarters in Duisburg to exhume the dead sergeant's body. At this point another figure appeared on the scene: Sergeant Emmett-Dunne's half-brother Ronald, onetime private at Duisburg. Quaking with fear, brother Ronald turned up at police headquarters with a tale of hanky-panky in the darkness that led to the prompt arrest of Sergeant Emmett-Dunne.

The charge: first-degree murder.

A Judo Trick. Fortnight ago, before a British military court in Duesseldorf, his dress uniform atinkle with medals earned in three services,*-- the handsome sergeant readily admitted killing his friend, and stringing him up on the bannister with the help of his brother. But, he insisted, he had killed only in self-defense. His buddy, he claimed, had threatened him with a gun, and to protect his life, Dunne had used a judo trick learned in the commandos: a slashing blow with the edge of his hand against Watters' larynx. Why, then, had he called in his brother to help fake a suicide? Sudden panic at finding his assailant dead, said Sergeant Emmett-Dunne. "I was only going to stun him." For nine days, while banner headlines in the London press blared forth the details of the latest crime of passion (20 British and ten German reporters covered the proceedings), the seven-man army court considered Emmett-Dunne's story.

Last week, dismissing the plea of self-defense, it found the sergeant guilty as charged, and "the court sentences the accused to suffer death by hanging." "I have nothing to say," murmured Emmett-Dunne as he stood before his judges with neck twitching and muscles tense.

Then he was led away to a base prison camp, where he was allowed to see Maria, who had stoutly insisted in court that she had not loved the big Irish sergeant when he was her late husband's buddy. But, she added, she loves him now.

* The merchant navy, the Royal Marines (he was twice torpedoed off the Dutch coast), the Irish Guards (wounded three times at Anzio).

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