1) someone out to sabo the people involved, the item probably
ended up in some ulu part of the camp, all smashed up.
2) the guards sleeping, therefore deserved to be charged
There was the usual conspiracy theories. The most "plausible"
one, albeit speculative, among the men was that one of the regulars
(the BC or DO or BOS or whoever) removed the equipment to teach a
lesson - kinda like a BMT instructor stealing an unattended rifle -
then panicked at the high-profile fallout of the loss.
Theoretically, none of the peng was rich enough to drive cars into
camp like the regulars, & it was also politically incorrect to
search their bunks or, at the camp gates, their car boots.
We did hunt around our areas a lot, though, as well as those of our
sister SAR unit. The GDS unit at the other side of camp (different
gate) orbited around its own planet, so we didn't venture
there.
I personally don't think the sentry guards slept. The discipline
was potentially more lax during field exercises but, if you've ever
done standby, I think you would've appreciated how highly-strung
the affected troops could be. It's likely doing normal camp-gate
sentry, multipled by a week. Your ear was always listening for
turnout/activation, you slept in your No. 4's &, when it comes
to nightly guarding of vehicles, you'd more or less rotate sentries
by hour or every 2 hours. There's no real letoff of tension;
everyone's very on the ball.
