Paratroopers

WASHINGTON -- The Army, shocked by last week's arrest of two openly white-supremacist paratroopers for allegedly murdering a black couple near Fort Bragg, N.C., launched a new probe yesterday to determine the extent to which soldiers are participating in hate groups.The investigation, to be conducted by the Army inspector-general, was announced by Army Secretary Togo D. West Jr. after he conferred with Defense Secretary William J. FTC Perry and Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, the Army chief of staff.

At its peak, the World War II 349th Troop Carrier Wing numbered about 1,500. Now, the number of veterans attending the annual reunion totals just five. When they gathered Saturday night for the commemorative dinner in an Inner Harbor hotel, they were almost, but not quite, outnumbered by the three guest speakers, though with the veterans' wives, children and grandchildren, the reunion total came to 38. Capt. Ernie "Stormie" Earle, 87, made it from Midlothian, Va., with the help of a cane and the memory of his own grandfather, who fought for the Union during the Civil War. Sgt. Ross Gwin, 86, flew in from St. Cloud, Fla. As he disembarked from the commercial jet, he told the pilot, "Real airplanes have propellers."

George N. Wirtanen, an Army Air Forces pilot who dropped paratroopers into Normandy during the D-Day invasion, died of cancer yesterday at Fort Howard Hospice Center. He was 82. Mr. Wirtanen lived in Parkville for the past 60 years, where he owned the Hillcrest Painting and Decorating Co. Born in Hurley, Wis., where his Finnish parents had immigrated, Mr. Wirtanen grew up in Catskill, N. Y., He got his first taste of flying when he was 11, after a pilot in a small plane ran out of fuel and landed on the family farm.

MOSCOW -- Ignoring the testimony of dozens of eyewitnesses and videotapes, the Soviet prosecutor general's office yesterday issued a report claiming that the 13 Lithuanians who died during the seizure of Vilnius broadcasting facilities in January were not killed by Soviet troops.The conclusion contradicts massive evidence published by both Soviet and Western sources and suggests that the regime of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is unwilling or unable to acknowledge the truth about the Vilnius killings.

THE BUCK stops here. - Quote attributed to President Harry S. Truman, expressing the notion that ultimate accountability rests with the chief executive of the United States. The buck doesn't even begin to slow down here. - Anonymous quote, but one which, if there were truth in governing, should be constantly on the lips of President Bush. Josuel Queiroz, the tour guide responsible for taking me to various parts of Salvador, the capital city of the Brazilian state of Bahia, had a question for me as we ate lunch one day last week.

PSKOV, Russia -- Thousands of Russians stood silently against the thick whitewashed walls of this city's 10th-century fortress yesterday, unmoved by the freezing rain in their faces, the icy slush numbing their feet, waiting for a glimpse of eight military caskets newly arrived from Chechnya. Under cover of heavy fog late on the night of Feb. 29, Chechen fighters assaulted a company of paratroopers from the Pskov Airborne Division in a remote mountain gorge. In four bloody hours, the Chechens destroyed the company, killing 85 paratroopers.

SHYMKENT, Kazakstan -- While Americans slept early yesterday, hundreds of paratroopers from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, led by a four-star Marine general, dropped into this remote but potentially critical part of the world almost 8,000 miles from their base in North Carolina.The U.S. airborne troops' landing on this dusty stretch of Central Asia yesterday marked the first military exercise ever with Russia and troops of former Soviet republics.Five hundred troops from the 82nd Airborne Division joined 40 members of the Central Asian Battalion -- made up of forces from, Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan -- in the paratroop drop to begin a six-day training exercise to prepare for future peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

SHAVEI ZION, ISRAEL -- My youngest son, Ari, was sworn in last week as a soldier in the Israeli paratroopers at Jerusalem's Western Wall, the holiest site of the Jewish people. For the paratroopers, the wall is their proudest symbol: They were the soldiers who liberated it from Jordanian control during the 1967 Six-Day War. The ceremony Jan. 5 was especially moving because at that moment, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon lay in critical condition in a hospital on the other side of Jerusalem.

WASHINGTON - The United States is gearing up to train several thousand Iraqi exiles at an airbase in Hungary to serve as translators, guides and intermediaries for U.S. forces if President Bush decides to go to war against Saddam Hussein, defense officials said. Pentagon officials say the military training is designed to prepare the Iraqi exiles for critical support roles, not turn them into combat soldiers. The exiles' knowledge of Iraq could prove invaluable as guides for U.S. troops entering Baghdad and other cities.

James C. Jackson Jr., a Baltimore firefighter for about 25 years and an Army paratrooper, died Wednesday of kidney failure at Union Memorial Hospital. He was 72 and lived in the Mondawmin area. Mr. Jackson was born in the Harlem Park neighborhood of Baltimore and graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1950. He then joined the Army, becoming a paratrooper. He served in Korea as a member of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, which began in World War II as the first all-black paratrooper unit.