SERIOUS THEFTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 July 1942, Page 3

SERIOUS THEFTS

OF AUSTRALIAN ARMY PROPERTY. NUMBER OF OFFENDERS SENT TO GAOL. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, July 3. A number of men in charge of army property were doing little else than stealing it and carting it away, declared a prosecuting police sergeant in a Court here. More than 4400 blankets, valued at £2OOO, had been stolen from military camps in New South Wales alone, he said. Gaol sentences of up to 15 nwnths were imposed for stealing and receiving. “This thieving is engaging the attention of the police, and special military squads,” stated the sergeant. “The civilian population is deprived of these products to enable our fighting forces to be maintained.” There was no better opportunity foi a man in the army to steal than in the ordnance section, the sergeant added. Earl Kitchener had declared during the last war that he could keep a check on the pay of all soldiers excepting those in the ordnance section. He had said that so much property disappeared from there that it would be impossible to calculate the wealth at the end of a year of the authorities who worked in this section. His words were applicable today. A solicitor said that hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of blankets and other property were stolen from military quartermasters’ stores m we Great War.