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



I grew up in Arizona and Kansas before settling in Tampa, Florida, when I was about 12 or 13. My family has a lot of military history; my brother served in the Navy for seven years, my grandfather fought in WWI and WWII, and my dad served in Nam. He never really talked much about the war but thought what’s going on in Iraq was not a good thing. “It’s not worth us going out there and fighting for the oil,” he’d say. We were a normal family, more or less.

During my teens I went to Northeast High School in St. Petersburg. I wanted to go to college but I wasn’t making much doing odd jobs and stuff. After graduation in 2000 I started working for a waterproofing place, trying to make enough money to go to community college at least part-time to further my education. I did the waterproofing stuff for three and a half years, and one day I was walking past my old high school when an Army recruiter stopped me and explained how much money they could give me for school. He never mentioned anything about Afghanistan or Iraq.

Before I joined I believed everything that the media was saying, like al-Qaeda was involved in 9/11 and Saddam was involved. I was also thinking, “It’s right for us to go over there.” But I guess you could say I had a little feeling in the back of my mind that maybe this wasn’t right, because we went over there in Desert Storm and didn’t go get him. Then Clinton came into office and nothing happened, everything was nice and peaceful, but Bush got in office and everything started to kick off again.

I thought about it for a few days and decided to give it a shot. This was in 2003, around when the war was starting—it crossed my mind that I might have to fight but I didn’t think about it too much. I mostly thought about the money I could get for college. My dad was totally against me signing up for infantry, but I didn’t listen and went through basic training, then airborne school afterward.

Boot camp was tough. I was in Georgia, it was 14 weeks long, and I finally came to the realization I was going overseas. Our first sergeant major would always be like, “All you guys are going to wind up going over there fighting for your country, and there’s no way to get out of it now because you belong to the military.” All the new recruits had the attitude of, “Yay, I get to serve my country.” There were a few people saying it was all bullshit and wanting to get out, but not many.

They stationed me at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. I was with the 82nd Airborne and, again, training was rough. It was basically just a bunch of running, learning how to fall, and then jumping out of the back of a plane two or three times a day. I had skydived once before joining the military and thought it would be a cool thing to do. Not many people can say that they’ve done it.

I was at Fort Bragg for approximately ten months until one morning we finally got orders that we were being deployed to Afghanistan in two months. We got a month off and then we had a month of everydays from six in the morning to nine. It was nothing but going through different drills of stuff we’d be doing over there. People were starting to get worried, like, “What happens if I get shot?” and wondering if they would come back in a body bag.

I didn’t really know what we’d be doing. I hadn’t been watching that much news because of all the training we were getting. All they were telling us was that we’d be on patrol in the cities and villages—we’d just be walking around to make sure stuff was all right up there, nothing too major.

We flew out of North Carolina into Germany before coming to Afghanistan. When we got off the plane we were called to formation, and then our company commander told us that we’d be going into the Kandahar area. He told us once we got there we would get further instruction on what exactly our jobs were going to be for the next 14 months. When we arrived they let us know we’d be patrolling in Humvees into the small foothills—just walking around making sure that no one was up there that wasn’t supposed to be there.

We had a couple of firefights while on patrol—nothing extreme, though. One that comes to mind happened while we were sitting on top of a three-story building and heard small-arms fire come from somewhere close. It lasted 15 minutes. No one was hurt, but I was scared shitless. The only thing running through my mind was, “I have to make sure that I’m safe and all my buddies are safe and we all make it home, because we have family and friends waiting for us.”

The one thing I did that has really stayed with me was this house raid. There was a guy inside that didn’t want to come out. We breached the front door but came upon fire from inside, so we backed off really quick. At the back of the house there was a stairway, so four of us went up to make our way down from the top. But we couldn’t because there was someone on the second level and they were shooting at our only entrance point. We didn’t capture him—one of our guys threw a grenade in the entrance and that was the last of him. When we got back to base I broke down and didn’t talk to anyone for the rest of the night or the next morning. I was trying to figure out what the hell had happened. Was it an insurgent or just some guy trying to protect his home? I still get nightmares.

My tour finally came to an end and on the plane ride back I talked with my buddies about what we could possibly do to get out. No one had any good ideas besides filing as conscientious objectors. But our first sergeant had said that the form wouldn’t go past his desk. It would just get ripped up and thrown in the garbage.

When I returned I was counting down the time that I had left, hoping I could wait it out and not have to go back. About two months after returning to Fort Bragg I was hanging out at a bar on Friday night with everyone, and my ex-girlfriend called me. She said, “I want to come up and hang out with you for the weekend.” I told her to drive up Sunday and take me back to Florida, and then I told her a few days later that I wasn’t going back. I laid low at my buddy’s house for a few months, trying to figure out what my next move was going to be—if I was going to go back, or stay underground in Florida. I didn’t know if that was going to work. My dad was telling me, “Go back. They’re going to throw you in jail.” I told him that they could kiss my ass.

After about a month in Florida I was searching all over the web, looking for different outlets I might have. I was getting desperate and went to YouTube and did a search for “AWOL.” Some videos of Ryan Johnson and Joshua Key—deserters who had fled to Canada—came up and it finalized my decision in a second. I called the War Resisters office.

My first sergeant has called a few times since I’ve been up here, asking where I’m at, when am I coming back, if I’m ever coming back. I told him straight up that I’m staying here for good. I just wish that a lot more soldiers would make the same decision and tell their command that they’re not going over there and the war’s illegal. Hopefully, the government will allow all of us to become permanent residents. I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life here.

My attitude has changed completely. Before, I was like, “OK, we’re at war. It’s the right thing to do.” But now I’ve been over there and done all that stupid crap. Then I came up here, and it’s like, “Yeah, the war’s wrong. It’s immoral, it’s illegal.” I just wish that the American people would actually sit back and realize it’s totally fucked.


WAR RESISTANT | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

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