People aren't getting that it was two characters that need to be added, not two bytes to make a short into an int. COBOL uses a fixed width character format for all data (yes even for COMP). If you want a four digit number, then you have to use 4 character positions. Ten digits? Then ten characters.

These field sizes have to hard coded into all parts of the COBOL program including data access, UI screens, batch jobs, intermediate files, and data transfer files.