A few Good Men Want Out of the Military
Christian Conscience Meets the Marine Corps
Louise Harris
1980
Louise Harris: Maurice, what attracted you to the military in the first place?
Maurice Park: I guess I can go way back to when I was maybe four or five years old. I can remember watching television, seeing all these early John Wayne individual types dying bravely for their country, killing all the dirty Japs. I thought that was a really neat thing to do. The whole thing grabbed me — hook, line and sinker. From about five years old, I was very interested in the military (not one particular branch at that time), and then I developed a specific interest in the Air Force. It was with me all through my childhood: I wanted to be in the military.
Later on, I decided that the military was not the place for me. I had a kind of reversal in my thinking at about seventeen. I remember saying once to a girlfriend of mine that had suggested to me the possibility of going into the military, “I don’t want to kill people for a living.” It hadn’t really caught on yet, but somewhere in the back of my mind I realized that I would be killing people for a living.
Right after high school I got into some jobs managing bicycle shops in southern California. I had been involved in athletics — cycling in particular — for a long time and, well, it started to get old. I was pretty bored, actually. I wanted to get involved with something else. I wanted to go to school, but I didn’t know what to study, so I thought that would be a waste of time. I decided to wait awhile until I found out what I did want to study. I worked at a few odd jobs, cooking in a restaurant and things like that.
Then lo and behold, your friendly Marine recruiter came on the scene and presented his whole idea of adventurism and pride. I was cooking in a restaurant in Oregon, and the recruiting office was right around the corner. We were the closest place to eat that was any good, and the recruiters came in every day. I would stand there and watch them come in. They were all sharp-looking and squared-away; they looked like the perfect John Wayne image of somebody who would represent the United States government.
They dated a lot of the waitresses that I was working with, so I sort of knew them. One day when my mother was having lunch there, the recruiter sat down at her table. He was a very friendly individual. She mentioned that I was working there. Later that evening, he contacted me, introduced himself, and asked me if I would like to cook for the Marine Corps.
My initial response was, “NO WAY! I don’t want to have anything to do with the Marine Corps.” But we got to talking; he was a good conversationalist. He asked me what my interests were, and at that time my interests were, well, up in the clouds. I wanted to fly; I wanted to get involved with the aerospace industry somehow, aircraft and the technological side. He said that the Marine Corps could give me that training, the skills and job opportunities. Along with that I would get a $1500 bonus if I enlisted NOW. Well, that sounded pretty attractive to me.
LH: You mean they actually give you a bonus for enlisting instead of..Well [I guess they can’t draft you. ]
MP: The particular program I was interested in was very specialized and very technical. The recruiter could offer the special bonus to people who qualified. That was the big thing, IF YOU QUALIFY. Well the pride that was within me at the time said, “What do you mean, IF I QUALIFY? Are you telling me that I’m not GOOD enough to get into this? So I tried even harder to get into something that was sucking at me already. You really get your foot stuck in things like that.
LH: Real good psychology.
MP: It was brilliant. The problem was that I had no idea, no knowledge of psychology at the time. But I learned.
LH: How old were you when you went in?
MP: I was nineteen. I enlisted under a delayed-entry program in September, 1976, and I went into the military in April, 1977. In the meantime, I ran across a book in a bookstore entitled Should A Christian Go To War? Between the time when I had enlisted and the time I was supposed to report to boot camp, I had never questioned that. I had never questioned whether or not I, as one who had dedicated his life to following Christ, should have any kind of responsibility, whether or not I should participate in war. I read through the book. It was written by an ex-Marine and presented the Mennonite theology that, no, a Christian should not go to war. A week later I was in boot camp, thinking to myself, “Wow, I don’t belong here. This is not right, what I’m doing.”
LH: Did you have any particular religious background, or~ were you attending any religious services?
MP: Yeah. I had decided to follow Christ probably three or four years before that and had been a very regular attender at a number of specific churches in California and in Oregon. So I had a good, solid background as to how I should conduct my life as a Christian — the dos and don’ts. But whether I should go to war was a question that had never been posed to me before, and I had no answer for it. I realized that I was leaning toward the NO side and that it was wrong for me, morally and spiritually, to participate in an organization whose job it is to kill people.
LH: How did you take boot camp?
MP: It was horrible. (Laughs) Worse.
A few Good Men Want Out of the Military
Christian Conscience Meets the Marine Corps — 2
LH: What did it do to your beliefs?
MP: In the long run it strengthened them — immensely. I had no place to go but to God with my beliefs. Within a week after reporting to boot camp I had been called a conscientious objector, something I had not heard myself called before. I took it like in shock: “Me, a conscientious objector? I guess so.” Very early in my career in the Marine Corps, I ran up against a wall of opposition to the whole idea.
Within a week, I had talked to a chaplain about my beliefs, believing the chaplain to be the big spiritual leader. He had gone to seminary and had had all this theological training; he would know, if anybody would, whether or not I was a conscientious objector. He showed me some regulations concerning it, and asked me a few questions that were very difficult for me to deal with at the time: “What would you do if somebody was attacking your mother?” “What would you do if the Russians landed in San Diego and were hell-bent on raping your wife?” Those kinds of questions. I had just solidified my thinking to the point that I knew it was wrong, but I wasn’t exactly sure why. It was very, very new to me. He determined that I was not a conscientious objector because I felt that I would use force, I would defend somebody in a particular situation.
This was in boot camp where my head had been shaved, where I was being yelled at and threatened, where I was told that if I messed up in any way I would be going to jail. My whole image of the Marine Corps and the government and the United States was shattered totally by my first week in boot camp. It was all a big facade, a big front. Now that they had me, they could do whatever they wanted to with me. It was horrifying. I was scared to death talking to this chaplain who was a big authority figure. He told me, no, I was not a conscientious objector, and I was inclined to believe him. He had dealt with this before and he was a big authority figure, so I trusted him.
I told the chaplain that I would go back to my unit and try to deal with it as best I could; I would try to become a Marine. He told me also that I was having problems adjusting to the change in lifestyle and things. So I tried to adjust; I tried to be a good Marine and do what I was told, to the best of my ability, I think. Yet at the same time there was always that digging, “What you’re doing is wrong. What you’re doing is wrong.” I couldn’t rid myself of it. I couldn’t cast if off and say “Well, now I’m a Marine, and it doesn’t matter if I’m trained to kill people.” My very basic job as an infantryman was to kill people.
LH: Were there any others that you noticed in boot camp who were having these feelings?
MP: There were quite a few. Probably five I remember who had the same attitude. We were always doing things like planning escapes. “How can we escape from this prison?” It is a fenced-in, guarded area, and people are constantly trying to escape. I was a big instigator in talking to people about escaping. “All we have to do is run and jump over this fence, shoot across this runway where 727s are landing all day long, get different clothes and a wig or something, and we’re scot free!”
LH: Do people actually escape from boot camp?
MP: Oh, yeah, yeah. Usually they’re picked up out in town and brought back. The people who pick them up are given a reward. I believe it’s something like $25 or $50. You’re very obvious when you escape from Marine boot camp because you’re wearing a camouflage uniform and you have no hair. Everybody knows there’s a boot camp here and that Marines are constantly trying to escape. And they bring you back. You get into a taxi and the taxi is not going where you want him to go, he’s returning to the main gate — to deposit you into the hands of the waiting M.P.s.
LH: So there’s really no escape?
MP: Very few people successfully escape from San Diego. Even fewer escape from Parris Island. A big thing for them to do at Parris Island is to take you very early in your stay there and show you the crocodiles and sharks that inhabit the waters and swamps around the island. It’s a pretty effective measure of control.
I tried the whole time I was in boot camp to allow a piece of me to survive, and it did. It grew into the rebellious extremist that I was labeled, later on, as a conscientious objector.
LH: Did you discover any channels for protest or any way to challenge the system in the Marines?
MP: No. You’re conditioned in basic training not to fight the system; you’re told that the system is so immense that you as one little person cannot do anything against it. Everybody is so conditioned that, even now, the friends that I have in the Marine Corps still believe that there’s nothing they can do to protest, to become involved in changing the system.
There are ways to protest. I did things like put posters up in my room.
LH: That was unusual?
MP: That was unheard of. But many people came in and saw the posters and thought, “Wow, that’s a really good idea.” I designed a poster with a big nuclear mushroom cloud over the earth. It said something to the effect of IF YOU’VE SEEN ONE NUCLEAR WAR, YOU’VE SEEN THEM ALL. I had a poster of Marines with pugil sticks, which is what you’re taught bayonet training with, beating each other. It said, real official- looking, THE MARINES ARE LOOKING FOR A FEW GOOD MEN TO BEAT EACH OTHER TO DEATH WITH PUGIL STICKS. I had a very anti-military wall in my room, subtle ways of doing things like that.
A few Good Men Want Out of the Military
Christian Conscience Meets the Marine Corps — 3
LH: Were you established as a conscientious objector by this time?
MP: Well, unofficially. Kind of a non-conformist to their system. Somebody who was going to cause trouble.
LH: Did they single you out for punishment or humiliation especially for this?
MP: Oh yeah. You get that all the time. I had a “smile” problem as a result of the fact that I knew what I was doing and what I was saying was more right than what they were teaching me. I got to the point where I believed that it was a big silly game, and I was not going to cooperate with it. I laughed and I smiled about a lot of things because of that attitude of mine. And that was very punishable.
LH: They didn’t want you to smile?
MP: No smiling, no talking. It is very strict, very disciplined, very regimented. “You will breathe when we tell you to breathe; you will walk when we tell you to walk; you will brush your teeth when we tell you to brush your teeth. You will not ask questions. Do what you’re told when you’re told to do it and exactly how you’re told to do it!” For three, four, five months for some people, that’s constantly being bombarded into them. When they come out, they’re no different than robots.
I went a long time, over a year in the Marine Corps, rebelling and yet going along with the system. I was still studying, still trying to learn why I felt like this. I found support for my feelings daily in my readings through the Bible. Through that I continued to grow stronger and stronger in my belief that just exactly what I was doing was wrong. I couldn’t justify what I was being trained to do to myself, or fit it into my commitment that I had made to Christ.
LH: They allowed you to have a Bible?
MP: Oh yeah. They encourage it, as a matter of fact. You’re not supposed to read it, and you’re not supposed to do what it says, but it’s good propaganda. It looks good for all their little recruits to have the little green Bibles they issue you in basic training. But you’re not encouraged to practice what it preaches. If you do you’re labeled a radical and an extremist.
It took me close to a year to come to a point where I was ready to say, “Okay, enough.” I had gotten married by this time, and as a result of that, I’d say, I became much more aware of other human beings. I knew that we should all love one another, rather than say, “There’s some Russian over here who’s called the enemy, and he needs to be destroyed because he’s the enemy.” I began to look at things more like, “He has feelings like I have feelings; he has a wife like I have a wife. He wants to go home to her like I want to go home to my wife. He doesn’t want to come home to find his village bombed and destroyed and his life shattered, any more than I do.” I began to take a kind of world-wide look at the situation. It was at that point when I came to the conclusion that I didn’t care what others said about whether or not I was a conscientious objector. I couldn’t continue to do what I was doing anymore.
I was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station, New River, in Jacksonville, North Carolina, at this time. My wife and I were living off base, as far as we could get away, to avoid the military. That wasn’t easy in Jacksonville. I could confidently say that if the Marine Corps were to move out of Jacksonville, that town would dry up and blow off the map. There are something like twenty thousand civilians and fifty thousand military and dependents.
At that point it was like an eight to five workday for me, with two hours off at lunch when I could go home. My job consisted of repairing components of helicopters. Little black boxes, turrets, flight control systems would need electrical repair. But it wasn’t often that we had much to do. There’s no intellectual stimulation at all in jobs like that, and mine was one of the better jobs that one could qualify for in the Marine Corns.
In the infantry units, what they do most of the time is put forty-pound packs on their backs, take their M-16 rifles and
helmets — they look just like GI Joe dolls — and march off twenty, thirty miles to pick up trash. They stuff it in their packs and return. They empty their packs, go to sleep at night, and do the same thing in the morning.
One day I was browsing through a bookstore in town, and I found a book written in cooperation with the American Civil Liberties Union. In the back, it had a number of organizations that I could write to for information about problems and hassles I had with the military. C.C.C.O.’ was listed, so I contacted their office in San Francisco about a problem I was having. (I had never received the bonus I had been promised for going into my particular field.) C.C.CO. sent back a lot of literature, including some on all kinds of discharges.
After reading their booklet, I determined that, yes, I was a conscientious objector even if I would still use force to defend somebody. My idea of using force to defend my family would not rule me out legally as a conscientious objector. I ended up calling the C.C.C.O. office in Philadelphia and talking to them about it. They told me about Quaker House2 in Fayetteville and about Bill Sholar3, and that I could go and talk to him.
LH: What kind of help did you get at Quaker House?
MP: When I first went there, I was confused about the regulations about conscientious objection. The military was telling me one thing; the literature and correspondence that I received from C.C.C.O. [The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors] told me something else. I went to Bill Sholar to get the straight story. If I was a C.O. I wanted to find out how to go about submitting an application for discharge as a C.O. I thought there was a form you could fill out; there isn’t. They just ask you about thirty questions, and you write down your own answers to them.
LH: Who asks you these questions?
MP: There are regulations in the military to deal with conscientious objectors that contain these questions. You just answer the questions however you want to. This comprises your application. You submit that to your commanding officer, your company commander, or whoever, and thereby declare yourself a conscientious objector. It didn’t take me long to write the application up — maybe a week. I had spent the last two years thinking about it. It was thirty or forty pages long, in detail enough to explain my views and ideas. So it was on my commanding officer’s desk within a week. That was in October, 1978.
LH: Are these regulations in a book that is accessible to all Marines?
MP: It is supposedly accessible to everybody. I got a copy of the regulations from Bill Sholar. That kind of shocked them at camp. They wanted to know where I got a copy. When I told them, they couldn’t understand how a civilian organization could have a copy of THEIR regulations. And the regulations I got from Bill were much more up-to-date than the ones they had at camp!
It was a big surprise. It was like a bomb I dropped! The knowledge I had acquired from talking with Bill and from reading about conscientious objection just overwhelmed them. They did not know what to do next. So I found myself in the position of trying to explain to them what their next step was. That complicated things, because in the Marine Corps an enlisted man does not tell an officer how to do things.
Basically what happened next was I had to go and see a chaplain, a psychiatrist, and an investigating officer. But THEY didn’t realize this, so I went voluntarily. The interviews with the chaplain and the psychiatrist went pretty smoothly. It took about two weeks to get those out of the way.
Bill had predicted a time frame of about three months for the whole shebang to be over. My wife and I were very anxious to get if over with as quickly as possible so we could return to California and be normal human beings again, rather than robots.
After my interviews an investigating officer had to be appointed by the command. His job was basically to get all the acts together, talk to people, and make a judgment about whether I was a sincere conscientious objector and whether my beliefs followed the criteria set down in the Marine Corps order. Then he had to make a report to his boss, who had to report to HIS boss, and it had to go to Washington for a final decision.
The investigating officer that I came in contact with had no knowledge of conscientious objection and had his own beliefs and ideas already formulated about who a conscientious objector is.
A few Good Men Want Out of the Military
Christian Conscience Meets the Marine Corps — 4
LH: So he didn’t like conscientious objectors?
MP: No, he did not. It is supposed to be a very unbiased thing, but I question how a man who devotes his life to the military can be unbiased or objective in a situation of that sort. He was not very objective. His recommendation at the end of our session together was that I not be discharged as a conscientious objector, even though all these people — the chaplain, the psychiatrist and others — had said I was a sincere religiously oriented person who had all these moral ideas and constantly talked about the Bible.
His conclusion was that I was not a conscientious objector because I didn’t have the theological perspective to draw the conclusions that I did out of the Bible. I had not been to seminary; I was not educated enough to understand these plain, very evident truths about what Jesus taught. Also, I had a friend who was psychologically disturbed, who was discharged from the Marine Corps. The officer somehow made a connection between my friend and me: because he was disturbed, he must have given me these ideas, therefore I must be disturbed. It was really strange. He came out at one point and said that he knew nothing about what he was doing, but he was told to do it, and he was going to do it to the best of his ability. So he recommended that I not be discharged.
His ruling went up the chain of command to Washington. It took four or five months to get to that step, to the point where they finally said, “No.” If the investigating officer recommends “No,” chances are everybody else up the line is going to say “No” to protect him; it is also for convenience, it seems.
This whole time, I lived my beliefs to the very best of my ability. I refused to work with weapons, refused to work with almost any equipment, was threatened with jail almost daily. I refused to obey any order of any sort that even minutely went against my grain. I just wanted to be left alone, because I felt there was no possible place in the Marine Corps for me to fit in where I wouldn’t be violating my conscience by doing some task. It was a bad situation to go to work every day and be confronted with doing things that just rub your moral fiber like two cheese graters turned upside down at one another.
In the meantime, my wife (who was pregnant) had flown back to California to be in the care of her private doctor. I had not yet received word as to whether or not my discharge was going to be approved or disapproved from Headquarters, Marine Corps. I decided that time was getting too short. I had a letter from her doctor stating that I needed to be with her at this time, that it was critical that I be there for the birth of the child and for my wife’s own emotional and physical well-being. I presented that to my commanding officer and asked him what could be done about it. He said that I would not be allowed to leave. (These kinds of emergency leaves are usually routine.) I left anyway.
I went U.A. (unauthorized absence) to California. When I’d been in California about two days, I learned from my Congressman that my request for discharge as a conscientious objector had been denied, as I expected it would in light of the investigating officer’s recommendation. My wife and I were very frustrated by this time by the whole chain of events. The way the Marine Corps was handling it seemed very unprofessional. They were losing things, misplacing things, and taking their time. We did some lawyer-looking, but we didn’t feel there was anybody in
California that was competent enough in military law to go into the intricacies of conscientious objection and deal with it effectively.
LH: Did you face a court martial for having gone U.A.?
MP: Yes. I returned approximately two months later to North Carolina, where I spent a month working with Bill Sholar at Quaker House before I returned to Camp Lejeune. During that time we contacted Pitt Dickey, a lawyer in Fayetteville who was familiar with the military. He agreed to represent our case in federal court pro bona publico, for a token fee. That was our next alternative, to go to federal court and request a writ of habeas corpus. All that month at Quaker House I was trying to get things cemented up so that when I did turn myself in I’d have some support for what was about to take place.
Turning myself in to the military after being out of it for three months was absolutely the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. There is nothing to compare with the trauma of going back into a prison system like that after you’ve been free for a while. It’s incredible. I spent many nights crying myself to sleep. I was scared to death. They have the power to lock you away and lose the key. They can do that. They didn’t do that with me, but there have been cases where that’s happened.
LH: Why didn’t they arrest you right then?
MP: Because I had turned myself in, for one thing, and they did not feel that I was much of an escape risk. Also, I had a lot of support behind me at that time. Were they to arrest me, a lot of civilian people outside their little world would know about it.
LH: Were they aware that you had contacted a lawyer and had been at Quaker House?
MP: Yes. We made very sure that they were aware of that, just for that specific purpose.
LH: Were they hassling you in any other way?
MP: Their attitude was, “Just go back to work and carry on as if nothing happened.” I got lectured by anybody who had more stripes than I did about what I did wrong and why I did it. “You shouldn’t have done that,” etc. Big babysitting service they run over there, I guess. Many of my closest friends were amazed that I had turned myself in. My friends were very supportive of what I was doing, although they were afraid to speak out openly against the Marine Corps. In private they were very much hoping that I could do what I had started out to do, to get out of the Marine Corps, to fight the system and win. They were all looking for one person to stand up and knock the wall down.
Then I was court-martialed, a special court-martial. That is a federal trial done in the military, with a judge and a jury of five officers, who are supposed to be your peers.
A few Good Men Want Out of the Military
Christian Conscience Meets the Marine Corps — 5
LH: Was your civilian lawyer allowed to be present at this trial?
MP: He could have been there, but we decided not to do that. The military attorney that I did have was very competent. He was a real human being. He was one of the few Marines who was actually involved with people in that organization. During the trial, we brought up conscientious objection and the fact that I should not have been in the Marine Corps in the first place. So it should not have been considered an unauthorized absence, since my C.O. discharge had been erroneously denied. Three months before, I shouldn’t have even been in the Marine Corps. I was sentenced to a bad conduct discharge and reduction in rank to private.
LH: What is a bad conduct discharge? Who usually gets this kind of discharge?
MP: You can give somebody convicted of murder in the Marine Corps a bad conduct discharge.
LH: Murder in the Marines? You mean a Marine murdering a Marine, not, say a Marine murdering a Vietnamese?
MP: Right. Prospective employers tend to frown on bad conduct discharges. It means you’ve really been a bad boy and not even the Marine Corps wants you.
LH: But you hadn’t done anything really to merit a bad conduct discharge, had you?
MP: No. I had just left my job for three months. The Marine Corps has a good record; they have a ninety-five percent conviction rate. If you do something wrong, you’re guilty; and you go in there and just wait for the sentence.
LH: What did you expect them to give you?
MP: I could have got a year in prison, a substantial fine, forfeiture of all pay and allowances that were due to me, or a bad conduct discharge.
After the court-martial, since I had not been sentenced to confinement or anything, the jury’s opinion was, “We had better get rid of this guy as fast as we can. He’s a trouble-maker; he’s got a lot of support behind him, and if we don’t get rid of him, he’s going to influence a lot of other people.” Their mistake was that with the sentence they gave me, It automatically goes up to what is the Supreme Court in the military on appeal. No other sentence would have done that except a year’s confinement. I don’t think they realized that.
About this time, my wife was talking about divorce. I had been trying to talk her out of it, but near the end of January, 1980, divorce papers arrived. I was pretty devastated by this, on top of everything else. I was still waiting for the appeal process to end, which could take up to a year or two. I was getting prepared to go to civilian federal court in North Carolina. My case was that I should have been discharged as a conscientious objector, and since I wasn’t I was being held against my will and illegally in the Marine Corps.
With a lot of support from Quaker House, I went to federal court in New Bern, North Carolina, on February 19,1980. The magistrate basically looked at my file, everything I had said, and read all the opinions of the investigating officer and the others, and saw no reason for me to be there. It seemed to him that the Marine Corps was just holding me in order to give me a bad discharge versus the honorable discharge I deserved. Two weeks later, he ordered that I immediately be discharged from the Marine Corps, with an effective date of June 18, 1979, NINE MONTHS EARLIER! (4)
Upon hearing that I had been ordered to be released from the Marine Corps immediately as a conscientious objector, I went to my squadron and told them to start typing up the paper work and to give me a check-out sheet, because I was leaving. I don’t know why they didn’t understand, but they didn’t. They ordered me back to work. I blew up. I told them I was NOT going back to work for them. So they scheduled another court- martial for me. I did a lot of yelling. I just exploded. And there were a lot of other enlisted men watching this.
My commanding officer called the general and told him what was happening. The general was opposed to the magistrate’s decision and felt it should be appealed. He consulted with the U.S. Attorney in North Carolina who represented the Marine Corps in the case, and she advised that I not be courtmartialed since I was legally a civilian as of June 18,1979. It was a sticky point, though. I was technically still going through the Marine Corps checkout procedure, so I was expected to abide by the Marine Corps regulations. The Justice Department finally decided not to appeal my case after both the U.S. Attorney and the Marine Corps legal staff recommended not to.
Then I got a message from Headquarters, Marine Corps about twenty-four hours later telling my unit that they had forty-eight hours to let me go. So a week later I was finally out. The Marine Corps works like that, they’re kind of slow.
LH: Did you do any heavy organizing those last few days?
MP: Wow, I couldn’t believe it! So many people came out of the woodwork during those last weeks wanting to know about conscientious objection. As I was checking out, people were saying, “How’d you get out?” I said, “As a conscientious objector.” I talked to a large number of Marines about how to go about the conscientious objector process and where they could get support on the outside.
LH: Would you ever consider going back into any branch of the military if they didn’t place you in a combative role?
MP: I still have nightmares about that, about being forced to use violence again. There is no way that I could, with a good clear conscience, go back into the military, any branch, or support any military action that supports the military.
LH: Do you have any advice for people who are considering the military, or for those who are already in the military, as far as how to go through C.O. procedures?
MP: It takes a lot of patience and perseverance to go through something like that. It takes a lot of strength, and support from outside people is what helped me get through. I couldn’t have done it without Quaker House and the people who are backing Quaker House. They helped push me up the hill when I didn’t really want to go over the hill; I was too tired to fight.
For those people who are thinking about the military: it’s not what it appears to be on the outside. It’s like a coffin. Jesus spoke about the Pharisees in white-washed coffins and how they’re just old bones inside. From the outside looking in, the military presents a very good, attractive, interesting picture of itself. But from the inside you can see just how horribly corrupt, archaic and bad the whole situation is. You give up many rights going into the military.
You can earn much more at jobs on the outside than on the inside, doing the same kind of work. There are many hidden
clauses in military contracts. You have to obey people that you wouldn’t give two cents to on the street, and if you don’t, you can go to prison for it. You must follow orders, whether you know better than to do what they’re telling you to or not. It’s not a good place to be. The military is not an escape. You don’t escape from anything. You run right into more problems than you’re trying to escape from.
NOTES
1. Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, an agency for military and draft counseling. Booklets and literature are available on both military information for GIs and draft registration information. Send a stamped, self-addressed envelope with your request. CCCO, 630 20th Street, Oakland, CA 94612 Or at: http://www.girights.com Or call the GI Rights Hotline at: 1-800-394-9544.
2. Quaker House, a military counseling facility organized in 1969. In
1970, it was a focal point of anti-war activity in the Fayetteville area. Three days after a major anti-war rally that May, featuring Rennie Davis, Jane Fonda and other anti-war speakers, Quaker House received several threatening phone calls. Fire broke out, destroying the house, but the Quaker House directors escaped injury. Arson was suspected but never proven. At present Quaker House has a two-pronged purpose of military counseling and general peace education. Counseling services are offered to GIs on matters of conscience and during the discharge process. The center serves as an educational resource on the draft issue and has been involved in training draft counselors. Work with area churches involves the interpretation of historical Christian traditions of peacemaking. It is one of few full-time military counseling facilities in the United States and is funded primarily by donations. Quaker House, 223 Hillside Ave., Fayetteville, NC 28301. (910) 323-3912 www.quakerhouse.org
3. Director of Quaker House, 1978-1980. Bill Sholar received a C.O. discharge from the U.S. Army after six years of service in Intelligence. He had held a Top Secret security clearance when he applied for a discharge on the ground that he was a conscientious objector.
4. Park v. Barrow, 79-659-HC. Since Park had satisfied the three basic tests of a conscientious objector (i.e., that he opposed war in any form, that this opposition is based on religious training and belief, and that his objection is sincere), the burden of proof was upon the Marine Corps to show why he had been denied a conscientious objector discharge. The magistrate, C. K. McCotter, Jr., found that the facts brought forth by the Marine Corps concerning Park’s desire to file charges of fraudulent recruiting were not inconsistent with conscientious objection.
About the author:
Louise Harris is an attorney in North Carolina, and a former member of the Quaker House board.