Re: Kelly Flinn
This was written in an attempt to get the Armed Services to make sense after
the Kelly Flinn affair.
In the summer of 1945 I was stationed
in a temporary building on the Naval Air Base at Jacksonville Florida. Upstairs
was a room where the General Court held forth. Since our group was heavily overstaffed
we had a lot of free time. Since the court room was open to observers - upstairs
was a place to be when things appeared to be interesting. There was a trial
of a sailor for fornication and adultery.
This was not the first time he had become entangled with naval law. In 1942
he was part of a group working on a new satellite airfield at Daytona. The WAC's
had 600 officers and enlisted women in training over at Daytona Beach. The WAC
officers had apartments near the beach, and the enlisted women had the beach.
It was a happy hunting ground for the 200 sailors working at the airfield. The
man now before the court had found a susceptible WAC corporal, and for a while,
enjoyed her favors. Not surprisingly she became pregnant and was soon discharged.
Her indignant parents had written to the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox,
complaining bitterly that they had permitted their daughter to enlist in the
service only to have her led astray by a sailor.
Knox had an exceptionally puritan approach in life - he had even closed down
brothels in Vallejo that had been servicing the Navy for many decades. He decided
to look into the parent's complaint. It turned out that the parents had first
complained to the commanding officer at Daytona. He conducted a captain's mast
(the first step in naval justice) and determined that the affair had been mutually
initiated. He then wrote a letter to the parents saying that he had had a lot
of other problems to attend to, and could not be overly concerned with romance
and its aftermath. Knox wrote a very damaging letter to be put in the officer's
file, which certainly did nothing to further his naval career. Since the commanding
officer had dismissed the charges at the captain's mast, the sailor went Scot
Free.
Two or three years later the same sailor was challenged by another complaining
parent, the mother of a girl working in the dime store in Daytona. The new commanding
officer at the air station, fully aware of the problems of his predecessor,
took no chances. He recommended a general court martial. This put the ball into
the the court, or should I say before the court, in Jacksonville. At that time
there were two different panels available at Jacksonville. One was staffed by
Regular Naval Officers, who could be counted on to throw the book at any defendant.
The second panel consisted of Reserve Officers who had better sense. This case
clearly needed and got the second panel. It turned out that the girl was not
pregnant, but had told her mother that she thought she might be. Rather than
exercising caution her mother had brought the charges.
The court appointed a naval officer who had a law degree from the University
of Florida to defend the accused, and the circus started upstairs. We were curious
as to the difference between the charges and asked the defending attorney to
describe the distinction. "Oh," he said,"my law professor up at Gainesville
answered that one. 'I've tried both and I don't see much difference'". He also
suggested that he might end his plea for the defense with "Let the man without
sin throw the first stone." My boss who was on the court, threatened that if
his summation ended with that he would be held in contempt.
Clearly there were strange nods and smiles between the dime store gal and the
defendant. Only too evidently a spark was igniting again. The testimony went
smoothly enough except for the venereal control medical officer who was much
concerned that any one of his patients might now be at legal risk. Doctors sometimes
have little patience with legal maneuvering. All of his comments had to be struck
from the record.
Since the complainant was a civilian, the Florida law had to be taken into account.
Under Florida law to commit adultery one has to set up a residence for the woman.
This was a reasonable ruling since no one wanted to level a serious charge against
a married man for accepting an offer from a field hand who hoped to exchange
hot work in the sun for lighter work in some secluded shade. The adultery charge
was then dropped and the court threw the book at the defendant. He was fined
thirty dollars, the maximum penalty for fornication, under the Florida law.
In the last years of the war there was a show running on Broadway called "A
School for Brides." It had tasteful scenes of how to undress before a new husband,
and such other useful studies. The audience was always one hundred percent service
personnel, other playgoers avoided the show like the plague. In many ways it
was a precursor of TV's game shows. At each performance one extra girl would
be added to the cast, and the final act ended with a wedding, where the extra
player and her groom would be married by a licensed minister and the happy couple
were given new luggage and round trip tickets to Niagara Falls. By this time
the sailor's wife, who had never joined him in Florida, had divorced him. He
and his gal were properly married on the stage. They sent wedding announcements
to the members of the court.