I remember this guy, Charlie. Charlie was always in the guardhouse. He wasn't a bad guy but he was always doing these silly little things so he'd get arrested. Like stealing sugar, nothing really serious. It wasn't until later, when I was put in charge of censoring mail, that we began to suspect he was up to something.
Every letter he sent home had money in it — a thousand dollars, fifteen hundred, not exactly what you would expect from his military pay. The strange thing was, every time he left the guardhouse he'd be carrying this Air Force canvas bag. So the colonel told me to follow him. I lost him in Naples the first time, but the next trip I discovered what he was up to.
While in the guardhouse, the prisoners had chores to do, you know, policing up the area, things like that. They couldn't sit around all the time doing nothing. Charlie's job was to see that the area was kept clean. He'd pick up all of the cigarette butts and strip them. His canvas bag was filled with tobacco and he was selling it in Naples for a very good price. They were paying him by the pound.
But he wasn't doing anything illegal. And we couldn't legitimately stop him. Col. Chapman discussed what to do about it. “Don't put him in the guardhouse,”' I advised the colonel.
Charlie cried when we didn't put him back there. He was knocking off about 15 thousand a year or better.1