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Last week, Flores & Co. won their private Viet Nam War after all. To their aid came Henry Aronson of the Lawyers Military Defense Committee, set up three months ago by a group of U.S. lawyers and law professors (TIME. Oct. 19). Aronson's strongest argument was that the publicity surrounding the courts-martial would only encourage widespread abuse of the C.O. regulation. Hours before the proceedings were to begin at Danang last week, the Army dropped the charges.
Back to the Boonies. Actually, the Army insists that it had every legal right to order the men back to their units. It maintains that neither Miller nor Moore ever bothered to go through with the complex application procedures and that neither could be legally exempted from bearing arms.
At week's end, all three seemed headed back to the field. Miller and Moore were transferred to other 101st Division companies. As for Flores, Washington approved his C.O. request as a 1-A-O while he was in the Camp Eagle stockade. Henceforth, he may not have to fire a weapon, but he can be ordered out into the boonies to carry radios, drive supply vehicles or help with the wounded.
* Would-be C.O.s can request their draft boards to classify then as I-0 (which exempts them from military duty but requires them to serve in mental hospitals, in VISTA or in some other service programs), or as 1-A-0's (they don uniforms but do not bear arms. This year the Army has trained as many as 3,000 1-A-0's, mostly as medics.