This was one of my father's favorite WW2 stories.
This is before the UCMJ became law in 1948. This is Old School stuff. I mean serious Old school.
At the time he was a flight officer for a brief time in Mississippi. He had officer of the day duty and part of his duties included being responsible for the guards guarding the flight line. He said he was a little nervous handing teenagers loaded rifles and made it damned clear during guard mount that they were supposed to follow the rules.
The guard was supposed to challenge whoever tried to get onto the flight line three times before he was clear to fire on the person.
To make a long story short, that night a guard shouted three challenges, fired once and a teenager lay dead on the tarmac.
Dad said it was a tragedy and it certainly was. Some dopey kid had gotten himself killed for no good reason.
The guard had done his duty. He had done nothing wrong so to protect the soldier was pulled off his post, told to get some sleep and the following morning a courts-martial board was put together.
The guard was charged with manslaughter. The courts-martial found him guilty, fined him $1 and schlepped him a carton of Luckies and told him to pack his bags. By noon he was on an airplane headed to Texas earmarked for overseas assignment.
He said the officer assigned to defend him filed the paperwork immediately reporting that the courts-martial board did not follow the proper procedures pointing out some of the shortcuts the board had taken.
Shortly after the reviewing board investigated the complaints and the findings of the courts-martial were set aside. The man now had a clean record.
I was wide eyed kid and asked why they let a guy off that had shot someone.
Dad explained how guard duty worked. Lawful orders were given and obeyed. The man on post had done his job and the results were a tragedy. A teenager was killed for being a dopey kid. There was a war on and the teenager was a casualty. The flight line had to be guarded.
To punish the guard would mean guard duty would become a joke had the guard been punished for doing his duty. He had been ordered to guard the flight line, had done so to the best of his ability.
The courts-martial was convened to protect the man. He had been tried, convicted, sentenced and the sentence had been executed. The carton of Luckies was an unofficial gift. They also mistakes in the proceedings had done on purpose to clear the man's name because his defending officer was expected to file a complaint and get the courts-martial findings overturned by higher authority.
The man had been tried, convicted, sentenced and the sentence had been executed. The matter was now closed and he couldn't be retried by a state or any other level court.
He was transferred out of state so that the base could not turn him over to the state to face any additional state charges. The base commander could truthfully say the man was being sent overseas.
It took me some time to figure that one out and later as a soldier I realized that Article 15 gave a servicemen some serious protection.
Nowadays a felony can be punished under Article 15 and not be a felony conviction. It can also be thrown out afterwards.
What's also interesting is that 30 years later when I was in the army we had a Sp/4 transferred to my battalion from Germany.
Tensions at the time in Germany were running high as the Baader-Meinoff gang was running around blowing stuff up. He had been on guard duty on an ammo dump and some idiot 2LT wanted to see if the guards were on their toes and decided to sneak past his post.
Seems the lieutenant didn't take his challenge seriously that night and would up getting shot in the leg by my new found friend. A courts-martial found him innocent of any wrongdoing. The story seemed somewhat off to me and I admit I was dubious.
A few months later he showed me a letter that came in from Germany a day earlier. In the letter from one of his friends in Germany it said that the lieutenant he had shot was supposed to be resigning as soon as he had fully recovered.
He said he was offered the transfer and suggested he take it to give him a clean slate. He took it even though he liked Germany because he figured he'd be a target for officers if he stayed in Germany.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this:
http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
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