I am provoked to this meander by an article at the News.Yahoo site which informs us that the US army is in the midst of a huge recruiting fraud involving the misappropriation of more than $29 million - yes, $29 million!!! - by soldiers who were paid to recruit on behalf, presumably, of the Defence Department. My instant thought was along the lines of 'so no change there, then!' because I remembered the words of that old reprobate, Sir Jack Falstaff - with my emphases:
If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused
gurnet. I have misused the king's press damnably.
I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty
soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me
none but good house-holders, yeoman's sons; inquire
me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked
twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves,
as had as lief hear the devil as a drum; such as
fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck
fowl or a hurt wild-duck. I pressed me none but such
toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no
bigger than pins' heads, and they have bought out
their services; and now my whole charge consists of
ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of
companies, slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the
painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his
sores; and such as indeed were never soldiers, but
discarded unjust serving-men, younger sons to
younger brothers, revolted tapsters and ostlers
trade-fallen, the cankers of a calm world and a
long peace, ten times more dishonourable ragged than
an old faced ancient: and such have I, to fill up
the rooms of them that have bought out their
services, that you would think that I had a hundred
and fifty tattered prodigals lately come from
swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad
fellow met me on the way and told me I had unloaded
all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye
hath seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through
Coventry with them, that's flat: nay, and the
villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had
gyves on; for indeed I had the most of them out of
prison. There's but a shirt and a half in all my
company; and the half shirt is two napkins tacked
together and thrown over the shoulders like an
herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say
the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Alban's, or
the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But that's all
one; they'll find linen enough on every hedge.
That, of course, took place in Part I of Henry IV but in Part II there is a scene in which yet another scam is conducted by the fat rogue with these potential recruits: Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, Feeble and Bullcalf. As the names indicates, Bullcalf is the only one remotely soldier-like and he quickly buys himself out. Feeble, on the other hand, a "woman's tailor" by trade surprises everyone with this speech as he is marched off:
By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once: we
owe God a death: I'll ne'er bear a base mind:
an't be my destiny, so; an't be not, so: no man is
too good to serve's prince; and let it go which way
it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next.
There goes a brave man and we wish him well. Meanwhile, back in the good ol' US of A they have obviously sat at the knee of Jack Falstaff and learned his tricks:
The scale of the potential fraud was "astounding" and ranks as one of the largest criminal probes in the Army's history, said Senator Claire McCaskill, who held a hearing on the scandal.
An Army audit has found that more than 1,200 recruiters had received payments that were potentially fraudulent, defense officials said.
"We now know that thousands of service members, their families and friends, may have participated in schemes to defraud the government they served and the taxpayers," McCaskill said.
'Set a thief to catch a thief', they say, so I suppose a US Senator is an ideal investigator into this shoddy business!
"This criminal fraud investigation is one the largest that the Army has ever conducted, both in terms of sheer volume of fraud and the number of participants," said McCaskill, chairwoman of the Senate's Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight.
She cited a criminal case in Texas, in which a former member of the National Guard was recently sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for leading a conspiracy to obtain $244,000 in fraudulent recruiting bonuses.
The Army expressed outrage at the fraud and vowed to get to the bottom of it.
"No one is more outraged about this than the leadership of the United States Army," said spokesman George Wright.
Somehow I suspect that Mr. George Wright spluttered that remark rather than said it. And anyway, I don't suppose that the "leadership of the United States Army" gives a flying fig one way or the other, they're just pissed that they didn't get their cut!
May I add, that I used the name of Fort McClellan in my title simply for the alliteration only and I am sure that from the CO down to the latrine corporal they are all, all honourable men.