Soldiers and Salvage

It was something strange to see--an unwieldy hodgepodge of Scandinavian and Colombian infantry, Indian paratroopers, Yugoslav reconnaissance troops and Canadian headquarters personnel--yet the world's first international police force, taking form in Egypt last week, became from the outset a real instrument of power. Danish riflemen a little sheepishly took up buffer positions between the Egyptian and Anglo-French lines at El Cap, about 27 miles south of Port Said, and this week Norwegian and Danish troops are scheduled to relieve the Anglo-French forces of control of a large part of Port Said. Close to 2,700 officers and men, armed and equipped, were now under the Canadian U.N. commander, Eedson Burns; soon he would have 4,100 troops in Egypt plus a $10 million budget voted by the U.N. General Assembly.

Unlike some of the U.N.'s critics, Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold was not disturbed by UNEF's comparative lack of military muscle. "In terms of its potential effectiveness in performing its mission," he said, UNEF "must be rated as equivalent to a substantially larger military body." In fact, the UNEF buildup provided the British and French governments with a face-saving justification for their decision to carry out a prompt withdrawal from Egypt (see above).

The sooner the British and French left the sooner the U.N. could get on with its other avowed task in Egypt, clearing the Suez Canal. Late last week the first of a fleet of Dutch and Danish salvage vessels began to move toward Egypt. To handle financing of the estimated $40 million clearance operations, Hammarskjold called on Manhattan Banker John J. McCloy, former U.S. High Commissioner for Germany. To oversee technical operations, he drafted Lieut. General (ret.) Raymond A. Wheeler, onetime U.S. Army Chief of Engineers. For the 71-year-old Wheeler, canals are an old story. As one of his first Army assignments he took part in the construction of the Panama Canal. "Being a second lieutenant," he recalls, "I practically built it singlehanded, or so I thought, being a second lieutenant."

To clear away completely the 47 vessels and two bridges with which the Egyptians blocked the canal promises to be a formidable operation. But British and French salvage experts who, by last week, had cleared a "Liberty-ship channel" suitable for 10,000-ton ships as far south as El Cap, estimated that a similar channel could be opened all the way down the canal within three months, allowing one way traffic to thread its way past other hulks.

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