Military Officers

An 84-year-old former SS major fell from a hotel balcony Friday while trying to escape rather than testify against a fellow ex-Nazi on trial for Italy's worst wartime atrocity. Karl Hass, who was due to testify in the trial of former Nazi Capt. Erich Priebke on charges of organizing the 1944 Ardeatine Caves massacre of 335 men and boys, was taken to a hospital with a fractured pelvis and compressed vertebrae.

The Air Force conceded Friday that the crash that killed Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown in Croatia last April could have been averted if the pilots and their senior commanders had followed rules for instrument landings at poorly equipped airports.

An Indiana man who posed as a retired brigadier general and wore full Army regalia to win a $1.8-million contract from Taco Bell was sentenced Monday to three years' probation and ordered to keep his uniforms and medals at home. Guadalupe Gonzales, 60, wore a gray business suit as he repeatedly apologized for claiming to be the most decorated general still living and using that distinction to win the contract from the Irvine-based company and its parent corporation, PepsiCo.

South Korean security forces arrested three ex-generals for their alleged role in smashing a pro-democracy uprising in which at least 240 people were killed. So far, 14 former generals, including two former presidents, have been detained on charges relating to the 1980 crackdown in the southern city of Kwangju. Those arrested were legislator Park Joon Byong, former Defense Minister Choi Se Chang and former chief presidential bodyguard Chang Se Dong.

The former commander of crack special warfare troops that crushed a South Korean civil revolt in the city of Kwangju in 1980 was arrested on sedition charges along with two other people Wednesday. Chung Ho Yong was held in custody overnight with Hur Sam Soo and Hur Hwa Pyong. All three are lawmakers. Chung commanded elite troops trained for combat with North Korea when they were dispatched to Kwangju to suppress a rebellion against martial law.

After an embarrassing no-show at a highly publicized meeting aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier Monday, a top Bosnian Serb general agreed to meet with a NATO commander today, alliance officials announced Monday night. The absence of Bosnian Serb Maj. Gen. Zdravko Tolimir, deputy commander of the Bosnian Serb army, at a military planning session aboard the carrier George Washington came just a day after his attendance had been guaranteed at a peace summit in Rome.

Israel's political establishment was outraged Wednesday over an extraordinary public statement by the commander of Israeli troops in southern Lebanon that the army would "not permit" Prime Minister Shimon Peres to stop "Operation Grapes of Wrath" before the military had achieved its goals. The prime minister's office called the declaration "scandalous," Israel's chief of staff said it was "stupid," and the commander, Brig. Gen.

Five days before the plane crash in Croatia that took the lives of Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and 34 others, the commander of the plane's squadron was relieved from duty because he allegedly told superiors that such flights were unsafe, Stars and Stripes newspaper reported in today's editions. A U.S. Air Force spokesman confirmed that Lt. Col. James Albright was relieved on March 29 after he had raised safety concerns but denied that there was any link between the two actions.

Col. Peter J. Gravett on Saturday will be promoted to general in the California Army National Guard, becoming the first African American to receive that honor at the Armed Forces Reserve Center in Los Alamitos and only the third in California. Gravett's rise to the rank of brigadier general comes more than 37 years after he joined the Army National Guard at age 17, shortly after graduating from San Pedro High School. He will be honored at an 11 a.m.

Your school system is in free fall, its leaders universally derided. You've got weapons in the classrooms, more dropouts than you can count, test scores that look like temperatures on the tundra. Solution: Get a general. The District of Columbia, which last month summoned retired Army Lt. Gen. Julius W. Becton Jr. to duty as CEO of its sorry school system, is not the first city to call in the cavalry to fix the schools. Before turning to Becton, the D.C.