Entrepreneurship
Anyway, American smokes were expensive in town, and there were guys paying us like twelve bucks a carton. That was a damned good deal, and it didn’t cost me anything. They paid us for our rations which were two cartons a month, but we could buy a pack of smokes anywhere on base. I never found out what they were getting for them, I wasn’t interested, but I knew American smokes were over a buck in town.
There were real stiff penalties for carting stuff off base…it was a black market crime. I don’t know why, but I didn’t give it much thought. I guess maybe because I wasn’t the one carting them off the base. But there were lots of guys taking the shot. Who knows their reasons for doing it; maybe family back home was in need; military pay is a pittance- a shameful disgrace; so they risked getting busted, doing time, and getting a dishonorable discharge. All for being truly American, entrepreneurial, practicing our economic philosophy, and…being capitalistic.
Every once in a while a story would break in the base paper. Some unlucky schmuk got caught. The APs, (Air Police), would stop every 5th car at the check point, the entrance to the base, and an AP would approach.
“Please step out of the car, and open the trunk!”
Cops are cops be they military or civilian, and it’s best to always be courteous and use magic words with them, you know: yes sir; no sir; thank you sir; and so on. It was a command that applied to everybody, officers and enlisted peeps alike.
I always felt the APs had to be involved in that shit, though. There was no way in hell to know who was going to be in that 5th car. It was a crap shoot, and there was a lot on the line.
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