The Deserter's Tale Read Free

president and my commanders told me. Somebody had to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction. Somebody had to depose the evil tyrant Saddam Hussein. Somebody had to make the world safe from terrorists who had overtaken Iraq and were threatening our lives. I felt it was better for me to help do the job now rather than leave it to my own children. Even Brandi, who was left alone at home with Zackary, Adam, and Philip, said to me, “You get ‘em, Josh, before they get you. Even if it’s a kid. They’re terrorists too.” I believed her. I felt the same way. In all the military training I had received in Missouri and Colorado, Iraqis were never called people, or citizens, or men, women, and children. They were called sand niggers, ragheads, habibs, hajjis, and, most of all, terrorists. In the army of the United States of America, those were our only words for them. My superiors made no distinction between civilians and combatants. As far as they were concerned—and I came to believe them entirely on this point—there were only enemies in Iraq, and all Iraqis were enemies.
    I know that many Americans have their minds made up about people like me. They think we are cowards who just couldn’t take it. I don’t blame them. I had my own mind made up about war deserters long before I set foot in Iraq. But I know right from wrong. I had a conscience by the age of six. I had to suspend it for a while in Iraq. Soldiers are taught that it is “Army first, God second, and family third.” I am not a coward and I never flinched from danger. The easiest thing would have been to keep on doing what I was told to do. Ever so slowly, as the jets raced and the illumination rounds burned and the houses fell during the long Iraqi nights, my conscience returned. It could no longer be Army first, God second, and family third. It had to be the tiny voice inside me that would not sleep any longer. I am not this man, I told myself. I cannot do these things any longer.
    This is the story of how that voice finally grew louder than the rumbling of tanks and the blaze of gunfire and the hollering of commanders. This is the story of how it came to be that I went to Iraq as a private first class in the United States Army. This is the story of what I did to the Iraqi people and what I saw other Americans do to them, and why I deserted the war and became an outlaw in my own country. I was made to be a criminal in Iraq, but I am a criminal no longer and I am never going back.

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    Childhood
    I COULD HAVE USED A FATHER’S ADVICE BEFORE deciding to join the army. A father could have guided me through my worst hours in Iraq. And by the time I ran away from the American army, I was starving for the counsel of an older man. I wished for a father with two basic qualities: knowledge of war and love of his son. But there was no such man in my life. There was no one at all who fit the bill. Anonymously, I called an army lawyer. His job was to advise soldiers in distress, but the only thing he gave me was an earful. “Soldier,” he said on the telephone, “you’ve got two choices. You get back to Iraq or you go to jail.”
    Hanging up the phone, I took comfort in the arms of my wife. Without Brandi, I could never have made it through the hell of living as a fugitive. I was a total mess. I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t handle crowds. Couldn’t even stand in a supermarket checkout line. All around me I imagined grenades launching, bullets pinging off concrete, and the heads of decapitated Iraqis accusing me of war crimes. I kept reaching for my weapon—an M-249 squad automatic weapon, thirty-six pounds fully loaded—and felt naked without it.
    In Iraq I learned that every soldier has his story. One man who was ripped apart by an explosion in his armored personnel carrier told me, as I picked up his leg and put it beside him on the stretcher, “Now I get to see my daughter.” Others