Icebox Raider

Last week ruddy-faced, lantern-jawed Captain Ralph E. Fleischer, onetime head of the U. S. Army School for Bakers & Cooks at Fort Slocum, N. Y., marched stiffly into the Y. M. C. A. building at Fort Jay on Governors Island, N. Y. There a court-martial of one Brigadier General, six Colonels, one Lieutenant Colonel and one Major formally charged Captain Fleischer with violating the 93rd, 95th and 96th Articles of War.*

On Thanksgiving Day, 1934, the prosecution asserted, Captain Fleischer "did feloniously embezzle by fraudulently converting to his own use two bottles of stuffed olives (50-c-), two bottles of sweet pickles (20-c-), two cans of crabmeat (96-c-), two turkeys ($4.80), two cans of cranberry sauce (48-c-), peas, corn and beans ($3.06), candy ($2), pies and cakes ($4.68)," all of which rightfully belonged in the larder of the U. S. Army. Last July 3, he was further accused of raiding the Army's icebox for two Army chickens (84-c-), two Army tenderloins of beef (96-c-), two slabs of Army cheese (22-c-), three lb. of Army butter (70-c-). For $20.14 he sold civilians some Army cakes, withheld sums of money due the Army. Total embezzlement: $324.14.

Other charges alleged that Captain Fleischer gave false testimony eight months ago at a previous investigation, told enlisted men "to keep their mouths shut " about his forays on the Army larder.

On trial at Governors Island last week Captain Fleischer dismissed all three accusations as "trivial." His chief counsel, white-mopped, beetling-browed Samuel Tilden Ansell, whose $500,000 libel suit against Senator Huey Pierce Long (TIME, April 24, 1933) was settled by the latter's assassination, asked for a postponement until President Roosevelt answered his protest against the "prejudicial attitude of the court." The court denied the request. The President sent no reply.

Second day of the trail the name of "Ella," which had been written on the wrapper of a pound of purloined butter, roused the court from its drowsiness. Captain Fleischer, a bachelor, explained that "Ella" was only a "trademark on Army butter." Two days later Mess Sergeant John Maresca rebutted this interpretation, testified that Fleischer had specifically ordered "one of each item of the menu of Thanksgiving dinner for his lady friend, Ella." Sergeant Maresca also revealed that Fleisher had been foolhardy enough to send a ham to Major Renn Lawrence, whose complaint led to Fleischer's court-martial.

* Article 93 makes punishable by court-martial "any person subject to military law" who commits manslaughter, mayhem, arson, larceny, embezzlement, sodomy, other capital crimes. By Article 95, any officer "convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman shall be dismissed from the service." By Article 96, a court-martial is called for "all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and military discipline."

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