disciplinary units

[CosmicGamer]

This thread gave me an idea. Perhaps in days past there was a group of criminals that nobody knew what to do with and they were put on a sleeper penal ship and sent off... or were being sent to a penal planet but.... I'll let you fill in the rest.

 

[Timerover51]

The US also fielded quite a few "questionable" individuals in the First Special Service Force, also known as "The Devil's Brigade" during World War 2. The book on them makes for interesting reading, and the movie was not at all bad.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Ooooo, I smell a whole campaign here:smirk:

Oh, that's what that is. I was trying to scrape something off my shoe....... :smirk:

 

[Fritz_Brown]

timerover, did you see that the guy who actually led the real Dirty Dozen died just a few weeks ago? They evidently weren't quite as hard-nosed as the movie made out, but really were a bunch of total ne'er-do-wells. Dude was 93. Hooah!

 

[Timerover51]

This thread gave me an idea. Perhaps in days past there was a group of criminals that nobody knew what to do with and they were put on a sleeper penal ship and sent off... or were being sent to a penal planet but.... I'll let you fill in the rest.

I seem to remember a Star Trek episode featuring a character by the name of Khan and a ship called the Botany Bay, and a Star Trek movie concerning the Wrath of the same individual.

Then you also had the "galvanized Yankees" during the US Civil War, Confederate prisoners who decided to join the Union Army and fight Indians rather than go to a prisoner of war camp or being exchanged and sent right back into the Confederate Army. I did like Major Dundee.

Also, New South Wales, in Australia, was founded as a penal colony, with one of the early governors being William Bligh, who at one time commanded a ship called the Bounty. As a side note on Bligh, while serving under James Cook on his last voyage, Bligh did a lot of charting in what is now the Cook Inlet in Alaska.

 

[Timerover51]

timerover, did you see that the guy who actually led the real Dirty Dozen died just a few weeks ago? They evidently weren't quite as hard-nosed as the movie made out, but really were a bunch of total ne'er-do-wells. Dude was 93. Hooah!

I missed that one. I do think that it was "Chesty" Puller who made the comment that his best Marines were the ones in the guardhouse when in garrison.

 

[aramis]

I missed that one. I do think that it was "Chesty" Puller who made the comment that his best Marines were the ones in the guardhouse when in garrison.

I've personally heard that from LtCol Greg Boyington...

 

[Timerover51]

I've personally heard that from LtCol Greg Boyington...

I suspect that more than a few Marines have said that. The following are all quotes of the Duke of Wellington regarding the English troops that served under him in the Napoleonic Wars.

I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.

People talk of their enlisting from their fine military feeling - all stuff - no such thing. Some of our men enlist from having got bastard children -- some for minor offences -- many more for drink.

Ours (our army) is composed of the scum of the earth - the mere scum of the earth.

 

[CosmicGamer]

I seem to remember a Star Trek episode featuring a character by the name of Khan and a ship called the Botany Bay, and a Star Trek movie concerning the Wrath of the same individual.

I was thinking of that and looked it up before I posted. In one place it says based on the TV series Khan and his group fled Earth on their own when he was overthrown and others like them were being persecuted and killed. Elsewhere it says in books by Greg Cox, Khan was put on the Botany Bay.

So not sure what the official stance is on whether Khan was a prisoner when he left.

 

[Timerover51]

I was thinking of that and looked it up before I posted. In one place it says based on the TV series Khan and his group fled Earth on their own when he was overthrown and others like them were being persecuted and killed. Elsewhere it says in books by Greg Cox, Khan was put on the Botany Bay.

So not sure what the official stance is on whether Khan was a prisoner when he left.

Looking at the Wikipedia account of the episode matches what I remember and that is that the Botany Bay left Earth under the control of Khan and his associates.

As another example of a penal colony, and what might occur there, you have the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, which figure quite prominently in A. C. Doyle's The Sign of the Four, where Watson deserts Holmes and marries Mary Morstan.

 

[CosmicGamer]

I'm wondering if any ships heading to Australia with criminals ever got taken over by the criminals, lost and ended up elsewhere and such. My Google foo did not come up with anything.

 

[Carlobrand]

Safety valve theory applies where most Imperial recruits are involved. Statistically, based on the world generation system, the "typical" Imperial was raised on a pop 9-A world ruled by a dictator, oligarchy, or impersonal bureaucracy. 82% were raised under TL7 or higher (no firearms), with almost 2/3 raised under TL 9 (no weapons outside one's home, and Big Brother is watching you).

All of which means the typical Imperial military recruit (and likely many a colonist settling the smaller worlds) is someone from a crowded, despotic, high-law world who saw a life of danger on strange worlds under Imperial military discipline as preferable to whatever future awaited him at home. This is more likely to be some itchy-footed wretch with no prospects and little to hold him to his homeworld, or possibly with trouble in his future, rather than someone of more comfortable circumstances and prospects, especially when you're talking enlisted-level.

 

[rancke]

Safety valve theory applies where most Imperial recruits are involved. Statistically, based on the world generation system, the "typical" Imperial was raised on a pop 9-A world ruled by a dictator, oligarchy, or impersonal bureaucracy. 82% were raised under TL7 or higher (no firearms), with almost 2/3 raised under TL 9 (no weapons outside one's home, and Big Brother is watching you).

All of which means the typical Imperial military recruit (and likely many a colonist settling the smaller worlds) is someone from a crowded, despotic, high-law world who saw a life of danger on strange worlds under Imperial military discipline as preferable to whatever future awaited him at home. This is more likely to be some itchy-footed wretch with no prospects and little to hold him to his homeworld, or possibly with trouble in his future, rather than someone of more comfortable circumstances and prospects, especially when you're talking enlisted-level.

All of this may be true, but it probably isn't. You're overlooking the very likely possibility of selection bias. Imperial recruits may come from atypical sections of the high-population worlds or mainly from worlds with cultures that thrives on pop 7 and pop 8 worlds, or some other combination of conditions that skew the averages one way or another.


Hans

 

[Fritz_Brown]

82% were raised under TL7 or higher (no firearms), with almost 2/3 raised under TL 9 (no weapons outside one's home, and Big Brother is watching you).

I think you mean Law Level (LL).

This is more likely to be some itchy-footed wretch with no prospects and little to hold him to his homeworld, or possibly with trouble in his future, rather than someone of more comfortable circumstances and prospects, especially when you're talking enlisted-level.

In other words, a Traveller.

 

[Timerover51]

I'm wondering if any ships heading to Australia with criminals ever got taken over by the criminals, lost and ended up elsewhere and such. My Google foo did not come up with anything.

While that is the included in the plot of the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", no ship traveling to Australia was ever taken over. You have to remember that in many cases, the convict's family traveled with him.

 

[Timerover51]

While checking something else in Adventure 4, the Leviathan, I came across the planet Gorgon in the Egryn Subsector, which is adjacent to District 268 and the Pax Rulin subsectors.

Gorgon is an exile planet for the Belgardian Sojourn, and is a quite unpleasant place, with a dense, tainted atmosphere and pretty much no bodies of water. The population is in the hundreds.

Given the low population level, and corresponding low number of guards, that would actually make an interesting planet to pay a recruiting stop at for mercenary units of moderate Tech Level.

 

[Darkwing]

Carlobrand, I have to disagree. It's not about spending money to train them. It's about a place to put all the foulups you already trained. Maybe they're just being given a lot of hard work along with cake duty (something they can't mess up easily, anyway) as a way of not letting them get away with whatever they did - negligent discharge isn't sending you home, it's sending you to a punitive unit. Or maybe they're getting prepared to take on a major mission ala Dirty Dozen as a chance to vacate their convictions. But I see penal units as a place for people already in the service, not a way to punish civil criminals.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Right, Darkwing - two different concepts with the same name. Yours is more viable in most societies with which we are familiar. The other might work in *some* cases.

Isn't there a movie (sci-fi-ish) where the prisoners are all released and given weapons because they are the last hope for ... whatever is being overrun? It's a vague memory.

 

[Enoki]

Carlobrand, I have to disagree. It's not about spending money to train them. It's about a place to put all the foulups you already trained. Maybe they're just being given a lot of hard work along with cake duty (something they can't mess up easily, anyway) as a way of not letting them get away with whatever they did - negligent discharge isn't sending you home, it's sending you to a punitive unit. Or maybe they're getting prepared to take on a major mission ala Dirty Dozen as a chance to vacate their convictions. But I see penal units as a place for people already in the service, not a way to punish civil criminals.

Why spend the money on training a bunch of proven losers to begin with? Historically, penal battalions are a last resort not a first. It's cheaper and alot less dangerous just tossing them in prison. Military screw ups are pretty much the same as civilian screw ups. They both cannot follow the rules and play nice with others... particularly other people they are supposed to be playing nice with....

 

[Fritz_Brown]

particularly other people they are supposed to be playing nice with....

With the caveat that, in wartime, there are a group of folks with whom you are *not* supposed to play nice. If you can direct the energies of these sorts of folk at them, you might have something useful. :smirk: