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WAR RESISTANT - PART 4The 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  I was born in Texas and grew up in a little suburb called Mesquite right outside of Dallas. We were a lower-middle-class family that didn’t have too much, just a two-bedroom house for my parents, two younger sisters, and me. There really weren’t any professional fields that you could get into—a lot of retail and food chains, things like that. When I was in high school I worked at Wal-Mart and didn’t think too much about what I was going to do with my life. I just knew I needed an education. My mom had to take out a second mortgage to pay off some credit cards and ended up in even more debt, so my family had absolutely no money for college. I never even thought about joining the service, but there was very heavy recruiting at school. They were allowed to set up tables at lunch and hand out brochures. One day I spoke with them and they told me they’d pay for college, so I signed up for the Army Reserve and was in basic training a few weeks after graduation. But I never actually made it to my permanent-duty station because I found out I was pregnant with my son and was allowed to leave. It was back to Wal-Mart full-time. My husband and I had been in and out of apartments; we were struggling to pay for rent and food. There was a lot of commotion going on within my family as far as what we were planning to do. My parents said we could stay with them until we saved a little bit of money for a down payment on a house, but that never worked out. We were forced to leave a lot sooner than we expected.  I was 23, had a second child, and was like, “I’ve got to do something with my life. I have two babies, a husband, and I’m not making enough to live.” If I went back to the Army full-time they’d give us all of this and health insurance. But when I returned, things were different. The war had started and they raised the weight limit and lowered the test scores, so pretty much anyone could get in. I asked them about a couple concerns I had, and they said, “Don’t bring that up, they don’t need to know that. You’re already in.”Things were also different this time because I had a whole bunch of other needs I didn’t have while I was in the reserves. They were playing right to those. They stressed how family-oriented the Army was and told me they’d help my husband get a job. What they didn’t tell me, though, was that I would be doing infantry things. They were training all the support companies in infantry-style tactics, because eventually they would run out of people and have to use them to do raids and things like that. I thought it was just procedure. At this point Bush was already like, “Yeah, we won. We’re victorious.” So I thought all I’d be doing was helping to rebuild all these shattered lives in Iraq. In the beginning they even told me that because I was a female there was little chance I would be serving in Iraq. I got to my duty station in Colorado and almost immediately my first sergeant told me that we would probably be leaving for Iraq in three months. They didn’t actually tell us that we had orders until after a couple of soldiers saw that they were deploying troops on CNN. Only then did they finally confirm we were going. I was told I was going to be a gunner. It dropped my heart into the pit of my stomach. It was like, “Great, I know I’m not coming home,” because snipers take out gunners, roadside bombs take out gunners; your fate is almost sealed. At the time I was recruited I was one of those big gung-ho, proud Americans. I believed everything I saw on TV—Saddam Hussein was connected to the terrorist attacks and Iraq was associated with Osama bin Laden. All those things. It’s easy to be angry because you’ve lost people from your own nation, but then you get there and see what the Iraqis are going through isn’t much different. It broke my heart, especially the Iraqi women I worked with at the front gate in Baghdad. Their lives were terribly, terribly changed, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.  When we arrived in Kuwait we had a whole bunch of other training, and once we got to Iraq they assigned us our jobs. They changed mine and told me I wasn’t going to be a gunner because they needed people to guard the gate of the base and keep an eye on the city. I didn’t see any combat but noticed soldiers that worked with me no longer showing up. And I’d ask, “What happened to so-and-so?” “Oh, he got his arm blown off and they sent him to Germany.” After that, I stopped asking.Any free time I had I spent on the phone with my husband. There was such a big piece of me missing. I didn’t eat or sleep much. Three months in I was sent home on leave during January. I was in a state of turmoil. I didn’t know where to turn, but I did know that it wasn’t what I should be doing. There was no way that I was going to confront any of my superiors about leaving, but my team sergeant and his assistant were already thinking that I might not come back because I had been talking so much with my husband. They told me that because there was a war I could be put to death if I deserted. When I got home my husband and I had a bunch of sleepless nights talking about what I was going to do, and eventually I was due at the airport in a few days. We started looking on the internet to see if there was anything the Army wasn’t telling us. He found the war-resisters campaign and talked to their lawyer. He told us about filing for conscientious-objector status, but it was a little too late for me to put in an objector case, being that I was going back in less than a week. I didn’t tell my family because they already had a feeling that I wasn’t going back. My mom even contacted the recruiting center and told them I was thinking of running. They called me up and chewed me out. At this point I had emailed my chain of command, asking them for an extension because I thought I could be pregnant again. But they said the only way to get officially cleared was to go to my base in Colorado to get a test. It was winter and there had been reports of avalanches in the area so we went a really long way around. The further west we drove, the more dread we felt. So we started moving east and north, up the Mississippi River, until we got close to Canada and notified the campaign we were coming through. It felt like the right decision. We didn’t have any problems crossing the border. It was snowing heavily all through Pennsylvania and New York, and the clouds were dark and thick. But close to the border—it was so surreal—the clouds disappeared, the sky turned to the prettiest blue you’ve ever seen, there were birds, there was even a rainbow. We took it as a sign that we did the right thing. The first couple of days were overwhelming. I couldn’t believe there were so many strangers willing to help us. I didn’t expect people to let us stay in their homes or to help us with basic needs. About three months after arriving we found a place of our own and we’ve been here since. We’re not able to legally work in Canada yet, but our applications are pending. I’ve applied for refugee status and my board is coming up in a few weeks. I’m anxious and nervous—a whole bunch of different emotions are coming over me. I don’t want them to tell me I have to leave but I’m prepared if they do. I’m very hopeful that they will be open to letting me stay and, eventually, become a citizen. I try to follow the politics—Prime Minister Harper seems to agree with Bush a lot and it worries me. But hopefully it won’t affect my ability to stay. I love it here. I wouldn’t trade my position for the world. We don’t have much, but the sense of having a clear conscience is well worth everything I’ve been through.
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