Soldier, Sailor, Beggarman, Thief: Crime and the British Armed Services since 1914

This is the first attempt to assess the scale of offending by British service personnel during the twentieth century. The main focus of the book is on the two world wars but, given the concerns about the numbers of ex-service personnel in prison at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the book concludes with a brief discussion of the Gulf wars and Afghanistan. The main concerns are not war crimes, but the range of offending from murder to petty theft, from rape to fraud. The book strikes a balance between military history and criminal justice history and is based on primary source material ranging from official documentation to newspapers and personal recollections