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



My stepfather worked for General Dynamics as a contractor for the navy. In a sense I was a military brat because we moved to wherever they needed him, but we were politically neutral. The first time I felt settled was when I enrolled at South Glens Falls High School near Saratoga, New York. It’s a rural, laid-back place—like every other Podunk town in America.

In 2000, during my senior year, I joined the delayed-entry program for the Marines and was sent to boot camp two or three days after graduation. Even though my sister was a year younger, we graduated at the same time, and my parents were struggling to make enough money just to submit the college applications. My grades were never that good and I was working at a grocery store, running the bottle-return machines, so I wanted to find my own way of paying for college to take the pressure off of them.

At the time the biggest things happening with the Marine Corps were just a couple of humanitarian-aid missions that didn’t get much media coverage. They threw a $5,000 bonus at me because the training for the job I wanted—electronic repair—was really long. Looking back, the recruiter was a pretty decent guy. It was before anything with the war was going on and they had no problem making their quotas. I actually helped them talk to other candidates. They were very, very selective at the time. People would come in with bad backs or bad lungs and they’d turn them down.

My first command was in Japan, right after I got out of training in California. A few months after I arrived 9/11 happened and at the end of my term they sent me to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Every once in a while the Marines get a wild hair up their ass, and out of nowhere they decided we were going to go to the Mediterranean to patrol for a while. But then Bush announced we were going to Iraq in early 2003. Just because of that speech they canceled the mission we had been training five months for.

Once plans became finalized they transferred me to military police. Friends were going to Iraq and it all became real. We started doing field training with weapons and convoy inspections. They won’t tell you any kind of date for deployment so people don’t have a chance to flee—you don’t really stay out of their sight very much.

The day came soon enough and they flew us to Kuwait. It wasn’t a true military flight but it was a commercial flight with all military personnel. It had a surreal quality to it—we’re going into war, getting security briefings, being fed meat loaf, and we’re watching What Women Want and Shrek.

There wasn’t much going on this early in the game so we left Iraq for whatever reason and I came back to North Carolina and waited for the end of my term. A year before you get out you’re supposed to decide whether or not you want to stay. The career planner gives you a piece of paper to take around to your command to see if they recommend reenlisting.

I went to the first person and he said I shouldn’t reenlist, and I asked him why. He said he didn’t think I had it in me. Then I took it to everybody else and they all said no. I busted my ass off for these fuckers and they said no, and I reached a point where I decided to come back just to give them the middle finger. They ended up giving me a bonus and the paper was stamped: “Reenlist at any cost.”

About a month later I was ordered to Germany to work at a liaison office in an Army hospital where we made sure injured Marines got to appointments and called their families and did paperwork. It was there that the wheels came off the wagon for me.

We started seeing people coming in severely burned and missing arms and legs. There was a bombing at a chow hall in Mosul sometime in 2004 and a lot of people were blown apart. The tent caught fire and in addition to the blast victims we had a second wave of people with burn wounds—it was late at night so a lot of people were sleeping and got trapped inside. You had to take it on faith that the guys coming in were human beings because they were completely charred and had no faces, you couldn’t tell head from feet. And all of them were screaming bloody murder because the morphine wasn’t working. It was nonstop like that for a good two or three days. A couple of guys even begged us to kill them. It really fucked me up.

Within six months I got called back early because they needed people for Iraq. I started to realize that the whole reenlistment thing was a pretty big mistake. There was no way out. Under Marine Corps orders and regulations you have to be against war in all its forms to be considered for conscientious-objector status. I’m not. I don’t think all wars are bad—people have the right to defend themselves, and I was vocal about it so it wasn’t an option.

This time I stayed in Iraq for seven months, mostly doing maintenance on base, again nothing too crazy happened. Toward the end of my cycle I received an email from my command saying I had orders to go to Japan again once I got back, but I really wanted to stay Stateside and stop deploying for a while until the end of my time.

When I returned I requested to be transferred to a nondeploying unit. It was the only time I ever got what I asked for and they sent me to a base in Greensboro to teach reservists how to repair electronics. Since it was a small base I actually got to see a civilian psychiatrist who was properly trained and things were starting to look up.

Then a couple months later we started activating reservists to full-time status and sending them to pick up body parts on the side of the road in Iraq. The first month they asked for four guys and the next month they wanted four more. We asked them why and they said, “Well, you know. They’re dead.” These guys should never have been sent in the first place—they weren’t trained for job. A lot of them were kids in college, and some had families and normal jobs. It made things worse for me because, rather than me going to Iraq and possibly getting killed, now I was safe in a nondeploying unit sending children to war.

At this point I started looking into leaving early. I tried to get myself removed because of my psychological condition but the shrink said she didn’t see any reason I should be let out. I found out about the War Resisters Support Campaign and started talking with them for a couple of weeks.

One day in the beginning of December I was getting ready for work, drinking coffee, and staring at my reflection in the toaster. All of a sudden the decision was made. I had a friend of mine drop me off at the base at about 4:30 in the morning. From there I walked through the woods to the bank. I had recently changed banks and didn’t have an ATM card, so I camped out for about four hours at the front door. It was incredibly close to where I worked, so if someone looked out the window they would have seen me. Finally it opened and I pulled out all my money. Then I went to the bus station, but the next ride to Toronto didn’t leave until 4:30 PM. I bought the ticket using my military discount and went to the bar to wait it out.

I got back to the station and on the bus, but every time I got off to pee I expected somebody to pop out and arrest me. My parents managed to figure out what was going on and called me, worried. But I crossed over from Detroit into Windsor without incident; I even showed the customs lady my military ID. The bus had a few more stops and we arrived in Toronto. I immediately went to a meeting with other resisters, and some sympathizers let me stay at their house where I slept harder than I ever remember sleeping.

Now I’m living with a few other guys. The people here are a lot nicer than Americans in general. They’ll strike up a conversation with you for no particular reason. What I did is probably one step above being a rapist to most Americans. But I didn’t have a voice about these things there, whereas up here I’m encouraged to talk about it. I’d like to become a Canadian citizen. The only complaint I have is the price of cigarettes, but it goes toward taxes that let me pay only $2 for Zoloft so I can’t bitch that much.

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