NEWSLETTER

The stories of five members of the American military who have chosen to seek asylum in Canada rather than continuing to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

INTERVIEWED BY ROCCO CASTORO, PHOTOS BY RYAN FOERSTER



As soon as I started high school, in a small town in Florida called Live Oak, I signed up for the ROTC. I had a pretty big misconception of what the military was really like. Those John Wayne movies and the history books made it look like there was all this camaraderie and everything they did was right. At the time I thought it was OK to kill people, too. A lot of it came from my dad, who was in the Air Force, and he would always tell stories about hanging out with his buddies and his experiences in Vietnam. But it never shed any light on how horrifying war really is.

At 17 my dad encouraged me to join the Coast Guard as a reservist. This was a bit after 9/11 and we were angry, believing everything that was told to us on the news about bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s connection to Iraq. We would’ve been pretty disappointed if there hadn’t been a war.

A few years passed, the situation was escalating in the Middle East, and I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. I moved to Gainesville where I was working at a supermarket deli, getting frustrated at making only $7.50 an hour. I didn’t want to take out massive loans for school. I didn’t even know what kind of schooling I wanted to do. I was pretty familiar with the military so I figured I could go to a recruiter and convince him to give me a better deal than some 18-year-old fresh out of high school.

I visited a recruiter and tried to work out a deal to get as much money for school as possible. I didn’t want to be in the fight and was looking for some type of communications job so I could get a similar gig afterward as a civilian. I was assured that I would not be in any sort of combat role after training. They stationed me at Fort Gordon in Georgia. It was a fucking nightmare.

Our barracks were built in the early 60s and formerly condemned. They were deteriorating and I knew of at least 30 people who had upper-respiratory infections from living there. The entire chain of command was made up of progressively bigger assholes, and for whatever reason our superiors got off on making our lives miserable. My platoon was ordered to have at least eight formations a day just to make sure no one had gone AWOL. They had us doing all this ridiculous shit just to “justify our paychecks.” Every day we’d be doing some menial labor just to keep us busy: picking up cigarette butts and cutting the lawn even though it was already too short to mow. They even forced us to rake lines in a patch of dirt where grass used to grow.

There was really low morale and lots of discontent. Most of the people there had combat patches and were being treated like they had just got out of basic training. It was like I had somehow ended up at Leavenworth; we were basically treated like a prison company. The whole time I was thinking, “Are people like this going to be in charge of me if I go to Iraq?”

About six weeks into my job training, my position was canceled Army-wide. It was kind of an old field—a network-switching-systems operator-maintainer—and newer technology had made us superfluous. I was technically jobless and that meant if we went to Iraq I would be forced to take on a combat role. Rumors about the war and who was going were kicking into overdrive. But nothing official was said, and I wouldn’t have even known that we were being deployed until the last minute if I hadn’t been talking to the right people.

I realized the danger of the situation and was petrified. It was the first time I really looked past what the media was saying about the political situation in the Middle East and Iraq’s association with 9/11. Nothing the Army told me had been straightforward and honest, and I came to the realization that I needed to get out or I would be fighting a war for nothing. They were deploying everyone around me. People on both sides were fighting and dying over there for no good reason other than geopolitical hegemony. I did not want to contribute to it even if I was in a support role loading convoys instead of on the front lines.

A lot of people were going AWOL, but nobody was talking about leaving the country or anything like that. I had a buddy who was stationed in Germany and came back unexpectedly, telling me his father died and he was going to the funeral. But then two weeks later I’m looking on MySpace and it says he and his wife are in Canada. It was the first time I ever considered something like that to be a possibility and for the next few weeks I read up on it. I had been trying to get a discharge by failing and skipping physical-training tests, but that wasn’t happening. There’s an Army regulation that says any new recruit who fails three PT tests has to be reevaluated to see if they’re fit to serve. I purposely failed well over 50 of them and skipped out of 37 more. I was also eating a whole pizza and lots of Chinese food every night to gain weight, trying to make it look like I was a useless slob. But none of it worked. All they did was give me counseling and tell me to get back to work. I was going to go to Iraq unless I made a serious move.

There was a Greyhound station on the base and, without telling anyone, I bought a ticket to Toronto on Thanksgiving weekend. I crossed the border with no problems and met up with some friends, who came with me to see some people who were war resisters. I eventually called my mom to let her know where I was. A few days later my executive officer called her to tell her I was AWOL and that he wanted her to convince me to come back. Thirty days later they sent her a letter saying there was a federal warrant out for me for desertion. She started freaking out because she thought the FBI would come up north and arrest me, but I’m pretty much untouchable while my application for refugee status is pending.

I started working nights at a medical-records department, after waiting three months for a permit. I have a girlfriend. It’s going great. The reset button has been hit and I’ve started over to basically right before I signed up. The only thing I’m scared of is that if I get deported I think they’ll send me over there instead of to jail because they need anyone they can get their hands on.

Everything I learned about patriotism growing up was totally flawed. I’d like to believe that there’s hope for America, but I really don’t believe there is. Making this decision has given me a permanent brand of betrayal in the States. But hopefully I won’t ever have to deal with it. There seems to be a better understanding of humanity in Canada. I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my days here.

< PREV

MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

NEXT >

POST A COMMENT [SIGN IN] Hi, in case you haven't heard, you can now sign up to become a "member" of Viceland.com, which entitles you to all sorts of amazing benefits like pictures and a nickname. Click here to make your own profile. You can still comment if you don't, but you gotta do it all 'nonymously.

Name:
Comment: