Was this ever a problem? I remember when I went to basic training in '59 we had a “Fire Watch” which really a security soldier (Trainee) walking around during nightime watching for theves. My question is was there much of this going around during combat? Or would the guy just be shot by the victim?
Just a thought thats been roaming aroung in my head for years.
There is only one thief in the military. All others are just trying to get their shit back.
What makes you think the “Fire Watch” wasn’t actually there to alert people in case of fire? There was certainly cheap manpower available to do the job. In addition it also get recruits used to the idea of standing watch. What did you have in boot camp worth stealing?
Are you talking about stealing personal belongings, or picking up military equipment somebody just carelessly left lying around? Because the latter is something every soldier does at one point or another.
Tom Brokaw’s blather notwithstanding, soldiers in WWII represented a cross section of the public. So, yes, all kinds of thievery went on just like everywhere else. It wasn’t endemic but it wasn’t rare either.
One big problem was the diversion by Service of Supply troops of supplies such as food, cigarettes, clothing and the like to the black market. At one time in northern France supply trains en route from the ports to the supply points, would be pulled onto sidings and boxcars cut out and the stuff sold. That was reported in the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes as part of a big investigation into the problem.
The diversion of supples was serious enough that a program of currency control was instituted to control it. it was ordered that at all personnel would declare the amount of money they had on them at that time. That amount was entered in a currency control book that each person kept. When you were paid the pay was added to the book. When you sent money home the amount was subtracted from the book. This cut the looting by a big factor. A low ranking soldier would have some explaining to do at the onset of the control if he, or she, tried to declare $10,000. Small theft still continued but not nearly on the scale as before currency control.
There were about 15 million people in the WWII military. Among that number was the same percentage of thieves as before the war.
I can only speak for myself but when I joined the Royal Air Force in 1985 we very quickly discovered we had a thief in the block. When he was finally discovered he had the crap beaten out of him at every opportunity. This could be interpreted as bullying but it was fairly clear he was going to get bored before we did and in the end he jacked his hand in.
As for military property, other than your colleagues kit, provided it wasn’t nailed down it was yours. I still have stuff which I have no possible use for but I’ve got it and they haven’t
Many years after the first Gulf war an entire Challenger engine and gearbox was still unaccounted for. Whilst it was likely to be a book-keeping error, part of me hoped it was in some squaddies garage