The thing about the military is — well, the thing about anyplace — if people aren’t given exact instructions or if a leader even hints at something, the Leute will go out and reinterpret what they were told.

Soldiers are especially notorious for this.  They’re usually less than 25 years old — when the human brain fully matures and organizes — and they think like children.  Black and white, looking for the loopholes, readjusting everything through their own lens.  If you give a soldier an order to guard a prisoner and not specify limits of movement, and the prisoner knows where a really good party is, and the soldier is a little torqued about missing Saturday night, anyway,  and the person giving the order is a Butterbar, guess where the prisoner will get guarded?