Monty, in this case you caused the extra confusion with this post:
You did not clarify your position until your reply to me that 1972 is not 1979 and even there you did not really explain that things changed in the late 70s.
You finally clarifed your portest at 5:53am EST today when you posted this:
So I did scroll back through. Now you should. You will find that what you were thinking was not really written for John Carter, Airman or myself to understand.
Jim
Spain ended conscription a few years ago, but during the about-200-years we had it, the Army included both conscripted and volunteer personnel, both among the non-com and officers (if you were a college graduate they made you an Ensign). I imagine it may have been the same for other places.
There used to be a seven year delay in the DEP? I started out with asking when the person who asserted that he was given the option supposed asserted that to the other poster. The response was “1979.” Then I said the asserter was full of bluster as it wasn’t happening in 1979. I never disputed that it was happening at some time in the history of our fine land.
Ditto. I guess I’m not used to deciphering montyspeak.
I enlisted in 1984. My friend in Basic (good ol’ boy from Georgia) told me that he had a string of misdemeanors while he was in high school and always got probation. Then he turned 18 and was busted for underage drinking, public intoxication, assault (he and another guy got into a drunken fight) and destruction of property (in the course of the fight they stumbled through someone’s front yard and stomped their flowers). The judge told him that he would give him the choice of jail or Army. The judge thought that Army discipline might straighten him out. Obviously, the judge couldn’t force him to join up. But this was a rural judge who had a lot of leeway in his sentencing (he once had a guy brought before him for drunk and disorderly outside of a bar. He sentenced the guy to clean up the “drunk tank” for six months)
I knew many guys, including myself, who got written up for “damage to government property”. We had gotten drunk over the weekend and fell asleep at the base pool where we all got terrible sunburns that were so bad we had to go on sick call. Our sergeant told us, “You’re asses belong to the Army so if you’re too stupid or incompetent to take care of government material then you deserve to get written up for it.” Yeah, he was a regular Albert Schweitzer.
See above.
Again, see above.
Same thing happened to me. 1987, US Navy. “Written up” by the corpsman when I went to get some Noxema to sooth the burn. My Division Officer forwarded the chit up without a murmur, gutless wonder that he was.
My Department Head squashed it, though, because this was the only “offense” on my record. (And it remained so.) But note, he did not squash it because the offense was without legal precendent, merit, or standing. He squashed it because I was otherwise a good sailor.
At worse, I would have gone to Captains Mast, not a Court Martial. (What they call NJP, Non-Judicial Punishment.)
Are service members Govt Property? Probably not in the strictest legal sense, but the practical effect is otherwise.
In fact, there was a way that some parents enlisted their children, and sometimes the children never knew it.
You forget just how self-contained and arbitrary the local draft boards were in what has been called in this thread “the bad old days”. My mother was on our small town local draft board and she said she had different people coming to her and asking her to draft individuals. She said sometimes these individuals were their own children.
She said people even were willin to pay to have it accomplished on ocasion.
There were a couple of scandels during the Vietnam years about people claiming draft boards were going after specific individuals. As I remember, it pretty much proved there was a case for that happening.
So kids could sort of be enlisted by their parents. When you look at manipulating the draft.
That was one of the reasons that Nixon’s birthday numbers’ draft came into being. It eliminated the chance of personal choice within the local draft boards.
TV
Apparently judges still try this. Well, at least one anyway. Here’s recent article from USA Today: Judge offers a choice: Join the Army or go to jail.
The judge’s efforts are wasted, however, as the services will not accept someone under these circumstances. You all, of course, know this already. The Army regulations state the following: “Applicant who, as a condition for any civil conviction or adverse disposition or any other reason through a civil or criminal court, is ordered or subjected to a sentence that implies or imposes enlistment into the Armed Forces of the United States is not eligible for enlistment.” In fact, all services, save for the Navy, have regulations specifically barring applicants from entering military service under these conditions. The Navy, however, will not accept them, either.
This is all from here.
The circumstances here are different. The judge was told by the defendant that a conviction of this sort would preclude his enlisting in the Army due to his probation, so the judge told him that the decision would be vacated with the condition that he follow through on his enlistment within 30 days.
Again, he’s not being forced into the service. He can refuse and go to jail. The judge in this case can actually be seen to be doing this guy a favor rather than imposing a sentence.
Joining the military because one is being threatened with incarceration is not joining of one’s own free will. By that logic conscripts joined the Army voluntarily since they could have chosen to go to jail instead.
He’s not being threatened with incarceration, he’s earned incarceration. He’s being offered a way out of incarceration, a way he is under no obligation to accept.
The proper charge for the offenses noted above is not damage to government property. It’s self-inflicted injury. And I’m fairly certain the base’s legal officer is well aware of the distinction.
The funny thing is in my experience, “damage to government property” was always and only threatened in the case of sunburn. You could have a bunch of people go out parachuting and half of them come back with broken legs and no one would say anything. But as soon as a group came back from the beach with sunburns, it was “damage to government property.” I always thought of it as a silly urban legend anyway. Basically people were saying you don’t get time off for a sunburn, but if anyone actually got sunburned enough to go to the doctor, they’d hardly get charged with anything.
For heaven’s sake, that’s like charging women for getting pregnant without authorization.
When I was at ‘A’ school at Great Lakes, one of my roommates fell asleep at the beach and he did get in trouble for getting sunburned. I am not sure what the official charge was however.
Most likely what **Monty ** posted above.
Jim
I think the charge is “hey dumbass. You’re a dumbass. Now we’re charging you with dumbass because you’re a dumbass and since we’re the military we can in fact, charge you with dumbass.”
Close enough, but with a lot more F-bombs of course. In the Navy every sentence needs at least one F-bomb.
Jim
Yes, seriously. Is there any special recognition I have to get from the government? Is there an application form or something?
Or is it as simple as you imply, going and buying some guns and signing some people up and giving ourselves a name?
I always took that “destruction of government property” to be a figure of speech and not the actual wording that would appear in your service record. It’s just in keeping with the theme of “You’re nothing, shithead” that they start telling you in boot camp as a method of breaking you down so they can rebuild you. It’s just that later, out in the fleet, assholes with authority keep playing boot camp instead of getting on with ship’s work.
I first heard it when we were nearing the Philippines and the entire ship was being lectured on the proper way to fuck whores without getting VD. When a guy got a dose the second time, he was run up for Captain’s Mast ( or more likely Office Hours, since the Marines were stupider than sailors on the technical aspects of putting on a condom).
When we got to Korea, command passed the word that the Korean government, unlike the PI, didn’t have a public health admin checking the girls, so there was a greater danger of AIDS. This warning was read out as official USN policy. Then, after the official document was read, we were ordered (verbally, unofficially) to just get blowjobs.
I’m not an authority on "boy soldiers "in the British army but have chatted to a few ex B,S.s
B.S. s join I believe at under the age of 18(the british age of majority),they join voluntarily and need their parents written consent to enlist ,an “old and bold” n.c.o. tell them what they’re getting into before they sign and surprisingly normally tell them about the bad bits as well as the rose tinted glasses parts, indeed they’re nearly always mega keen and intend the army to be a life long career.
The ones I 've met were all career soldiers.
They are segregated from the rest of the army,no doubt to stop them being corrupted morally (alcohol.smoking,women and all that )
They endure a horrendously tough and disciplined extended training regime,are not allowed to smoke or drink and can be promoted to “Boy Soldier ranks” of corporal etc. but these ranks apply only to Boy service and vanish when they become members of the “army proper”
They can not be sent on active service until they become adults (ie 18)
When in the “army proper” they get accelerated promotion,deservedly,because apart from their keeness and volunteering they have been trained totally to the limit during their Boy Soldier service.
This is what I have gleaned in conversation,I may well have included innaccuracies in this posting ,if I have my apologies .
I notice that Monty has failed to respond to the very cogent post that pointed out that in 1984, a person enlisted in the military as a method of avoiding the wrath of a judge. It’s easy to win arguments when you don’t respond to things people say that are not in accord with your position.
I again maintain: you cannot state with certainty that it does not happen, even to this day. I am certain that the military tries to avoid it. But you simply cannot discount what happens in a rural judge’s court, that doesn’t have to be on record. TRUST me on this.