The Deserter's Tale by Joshua Key Read Free Book Online

children and came from Lawton, Oklahoma. He was looking forward to returning to his regular military job as a surveyor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, but for the time being he was stuck recruiting young Americans and working on a quota system. I can’t remember exactly how many men he said he was required to recruit, but I believe it was about one person per week. He was stressed out about it and said he couldn’t wait to return to his former job as a military surveyor.
    â€œThey rip up my ass if I don’t make my quota,” Van Houten said.
    For my medical and physical tests, I peed in a cup, gave blood, and was made to walk like a duck—knees bent and squatting low with my butt near the ground. I asked about that and was told the test would indicate if I was flat-footed. Apparently, you could not get into the military with flat feet. It seemed that they gave me every vaccination known to mankind, including eight shots against anthrax.
    I was almost twenty-four when I applied, and I felt old compared to the bulk of the applicants, who appeared to be teenagers. Young men and women who were just seventeen were allowed to join if they had permission from their parents. I would say that about three-quarters of the applicants were men and one-quarter were women.
    One day, a teenage girl entered the recruiting station and began to apply for entry to the army. A little later, a lieutenant colonel in military apparel burst through the door. All the soldiers and noncommissioned officers in the room jumped to their feet to salute him. Somebody whispered to me that he was in the marines. He swept by us all, grabbed his daughter by the arm, and shouted for all of us to hear, “There is no goddamn way that any daughter of mine is joining the fucking army.” He dragged her out the door and that was the last I saw of her. I had heard that marines and soldiers hated each other, but this was the first time I saw the emotion expressed openly.
    Another time, at a military entrance processing station—a separate building to which I often had to go as my application inched forward in the army bureaucracy—I saw a poster on a wall that read: “Desertion in the time of war means death by a firing squad.”
    I watched a young man and woman standing under the poster.
    â€œOh my God,” she said, “can they really do that?” I wondered the same thing as I was made to sign a paper saying that I had read and understood the poster.
    Finally, in mid-April 2002—just a month shy of my twenty-fourth birthday—I learned from Van Houten that the army had cleared all of my medical tests and paperwork. I was fit to join the United States Army, he said, and I would do my country proud. He explained that I would receive $1,200 a month in salary and commit to a three-year contract. He did not tell me what I would learn only later—that the army could recall me anytime it wanted up to seven years after I signed up.
    One last time, before signing, I asked Van Houten for reassurance that I would not be sent into combat and that I would be allowed to live with my family and work for the army in the United States.
    â€œIf World War Three breaks out and they are sending everybody overseas, then you could be required to do duty as well,” he said. “But even then, it would be unlikely. Because of your growing family, you would be the last person to be sent overseas.”
    That seemed reasonable to me.
    To seal the deal, Staff Sergeant Van Houten looked me in the eye, man to man, shook my hand, and said, “Soldier, you ain’t got anything to worry about. You’re going to be building bridges in the continental United States and home with your family every evening.”
    Two other noncommissioned officers looked over my shoulder, turned the pages of the contract, skipped over the fine print, and pointed out all the X’s where I was to sign my name. I signed where they pointed and