World war crime a thief on a battlefield

The case of a soldier who stole eye glasses and a compass from a officer int he battlefield

Transcript

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World War Crime. This is a short little snippet of a podcast, a little series I've fancy doing for a little while, to tell you some of the crimes that occurred during the First World War, have affected soldiers on the Western Front, and what happened to them afterwards. I'd like to thank the British Newspaper Archives, Ancestry.com, the Commonwealth War Graves, and several other platforms to do so. So this will be a little podcast on a Friday afternoon you might want to listen to on the way home the short, sharp, sweet stories about soldiers during the Great War, and possibly might get some to go for the second, stealing from a body from a battlefield. This case came out in January 1916 when Private William Jones of the South West Borders went into a pawn shop and tried to get rid of a pair of binoculars and a compass. However, the pawnbroker looks at them closely and can see that the young private had in his possession items belonging to an officer. A GW Field of a Gloucestershire Regiment. He called the local police at Impervale, and he would soon be arrested. The value of the items that were taken was the grand sum of ten pounds. Sadly for this, I couldn't locate who William Jones was, of course, a very common name, especially in the South Wales borders, but after a little bit of extra research we can see that they were in the area of Hullock in France in September 1915. William Jones has gone across the battlefield, and he's located the remains of the officer, George William Field, a second lieutenant of the 10th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment, aged just 19 years old. He died in a skirmishery attack on the twenty fifth of September. He may have laid out there for several days before William Jones came across his body. We don't know any other items that were taken. However, George William Field did receive a burial, so perhaps not taken off him at the time when he was on the battlefield, but maybe just before his burial. He's remembered at St. Mary's ADS Cemetery in the village of Haynes. He's in a special memorial. When you visit the cemeteries of the Western Front, sometimes you'll see these special memorials. This is where once upon a time there'd been a cemetery with a register somewhere on the battlefield, but sadly it would be lost during subsequent battles. As for William Jones, he would receive a custodial sentence, but that is as far as we know. These are only short, sharp little podcasts which hopefully you find interesting. Week by week, on a Friday, I'm going to give you another little crime tidbit from the Battlefields. Though if you know of any others, please send us a message. And also please follow us on Facebook and also on TikTok.