Counterfeit orders, or real?

[Hank Trent]

There's got to be a good answer to this, but what is it?

Here are a couple examples of orders written for soldiers.

http://www.vmi.edu/archives.aspx?id=7225

For example, check out #5 the "foraging detail," or #9 or #10, or any of the simple all-handwritten ones on scraps.

Let's say I'm riding down the road, and I'm stopped by fellow Confederates on suspicion of being absent without leave, straggling, spying, who knows what. I pull out an order like that and show it.

How does anyone know it's a real order, if they're with some other regiment/brigade/etc. and don't know me by sight or have quick access to my officer? How do they even know I am who the order says I am?

If the officer's name sounds right, and the duty seems reasonable, and I don't have any official ID on me (because ID wasn't required to be carried, correct?) do they just pass me on through anyway? It would take a handwriting expert to compare a decent signature forgery. It would waste everyone's time if a runner or telegraph had to be sent to my officer to double-check he'd given the order each time I was stopped.

So wouldn't this be a huge security hole, where people could write out fake orders for themselves on scraps of paper and wander the countryside on "official duties," as long as they had access to an officer's name to forge and some idea what regiments were in the area--something that most soldiers and many civilians could find out if they really wanted to?

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Bob 125th NYSVI]

Re: Counterfeit orders, or real?

Well having encountered something similiar to that while on picket duty. The duty of the picket is to detain the person(s) and get the corporal of the guard.

How the corporal of the guard handles it is up to him but depending on the rank of the detainees this may get pushed all the way up to the officer of the day.

If it isn't handle in this matter you are right, potentially you have either let spies or deserters through your picket line.

Exactly what you aren't supposed to do.

[Drygoods]

Re: Counterfeit orders, or real?

Mr. Trent,

Over the years I've wondered the same thing. For instance, we have a Form 31 - Section 8 which excuses a soldier from his duties simply because he was foreign born, which is dated 1863. Another one that we have is a handwritten order from a Brig Generall Opdyke? from TN in 1865 and although the penmanship is lovely, I wonder how far the order must have went, or if it worked at all? If you had that section 8 in your pocket and still were in uniform and were picked up, would they let you go because of that paper? I doubt it.

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: Counterfeit orders, or real?

I can think of a few answers, none definitive.

For one thing, if you're going to go AWOL for awhile, it's easy enough to do that without adding the crime of forgery and upping your penalty -- or creating the suspicion of espionage and upping it still further.

Second, the orders all have built-in firewalls against abuse -- timeframes by which the soldier must be back or have reported to another officer. This is a standard feature that also occurs in receipts for orders (time sent and time received are both noted) and temporary passes to fall out on the march. I read recently of an example where a unit made copies of the latter in advance of a march, leaving a blank for the name of the soldier and signature of an officer and uniformly limiting the absence to ten minutes.

But also, there's a certain compositional style that the would-be deserter or spy would have to master on top of getting the names of units and approvers right. And there's the matter of creating and signing a document in a handwriting different than your own so you're not tripped up the moment someone asks you to write a brief account of your business to take to their superior.

None of these are foolproof, but these and similar factors, taken in combination, create a security system that's probably a bit more sophisticated than it initially seems, especially when combined with Bob's vigilance on picket, and that of other soldiers, provosts, and home guards on patrol or at various checkpoints.

[Robert A Mosher]

Re: Counterfeit orders, or real?

Mike Schaffner pretty much summed up the answer. The individual private soldier on guard or picket duty is not really expected to be able to answer such questions. His orders will be clear and simple - and anything not covered by those orders is to be refered up his chain of command. Thus the guard/picket mount system provides a series of ncos and then officers who are the ones expected to deal with the knotty problems that may arise in situations not covered by the individual guard's orders. The ncos act as the filter and would be expected to quickly determine that the guard was correct to call for help and then kick it further up the chain to an officer, and then summon the officer to resolve any questions that may have thus been identified. If higher commands were doing anything out of the ordinary, they would probably have in some way informed the officer of the guard to expect something out of the ordinary accompanied by instructions about how to handle it if it came up during their watch.

For the average deserter, just going over the hill or falling out sick while on the march or slipping away while foraging is a lot easier. While the situation is not exactly comparable, I once found that I could strike my shelter half, pack up my kit, load up and walk out of camp in the middle of the night without being noticed. In a real encampment, there might have been a sentry on the company street and there would certainly have been a guard and or picket line around the larger encampment - but it was still remarkably easy to slip away at about 2 am without being confronted by anyone.

Robert A. Mosher

[VMI88]

Re: Counterfeit orders, or real?

Could a soldier in the 1860's have written out fake orders and gotten away with it? Sure, but then so could a soldier today. There have been numerous cases of modern soldiers creating fake awards documents, security clearances, etc., and getting away with it for years. Many have probably never been caught.

When I deployed to the Middle East for the first time in May 2003, everything was in a state of absolute chaos. I was routed through a number of transient camps before I finally reached my ultimate destination in Qatar. My gaining command had just moved, and nobody along the way seemed to know where I was supposed to go or how I was supposed to get there. Nobody on the other end knew I was coming. I joked at the time that I probably could have spent my entire deployment sleeping in transient billets, flying around the Middle East on fake orders. I probably could have too -- all I would have needed was access to a computer to generate something official looking.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Counterfeit orders, or real?

Thank you-all! That gives excellent insight into the context of the whole situation, and the combination of factors that would merge to make it impractical and not worth it, though still theoretically possible.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[tomarch]

Re: Counterfeit orders, or real?

Hank... As a side note, you might find this amusing.

http://wesclark.com/jw/baron_az.html