AWOL Soldier....
Lizard
Posts: 12,091
I thought this was an interesting article to share. This is from my little town's newspaper about that soldier that recently turned himself in.
http://www.avpress.com/n/04/1004_s1.hts
PALMDALE - Helga Aguayo said she had no idea her husband would slip out the bedroom window of their apartment in Schweinfurt, Germany, in order to elude redeployment with his U.S. Army unit. He said later that he fled because he morally objects to war.
"I went back there and to my shock the window was open, the screen was off and he was not there," she said.
Spc. Agustín Aguayo, 34, an Army medic from Palmdale, served a one-year tour in Iraq without loading his weapon.
Joining the small number of troops who have refused movement to the war on the basis of moral objections, Aguayo said, at a news conference in Los Angeles last week, that he could not go back to war because he believes killing is wrong.
After the news conference, where he was flanked by anti-war activists, Aguayo turned himself in at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin.
Aguayo arrived back in Frankfurt Tuesday at 11:45 a.m. local time. From there, he was taken to Schweinfurt for processing. He may be sent on to Kuwait or Iraq for possible court-martial.
Helga Aguayo spoke to a Valley Press reporter at her grandmother's house in Palmdale, relating how the family's lives have changed since her husband elected to refuse further association with war.
Her husband was not always an opponent of war, she said, but he discovered during training that he would never be able to kill another person.
After seeing the casualties of war in Iraq - both Iraqi and American military - he decided he could not participate in any capacity in war - even as a medic saving lives.
The military chapter of the Aguayo family's story started four years ago in Palmdale.
Helga and Agustín each had earned an associate's degree from Antelope Valley College, Helga said.
She studied computer science and got a job with the A.V. Hope Foundation, supporting people with HIV.
Aguayo graduated with honors in the business administration program and started working the night shift at Home Depot.
"He was at a crossroads in his life. … He wanted a job that gave him fulfillment," she said. "He wanted to do something great."
One day Aguayo, then 31 years old, heard a radio spot for the Army Reserve and came home with a sparkle in his eye.
They went to the recruiter together. He encouraged Aguayo to enlist in active service.
"It sounds great," Helga said. "You would do wonderful things. … We really wanted to do a great thing."
It was a difficult decision to hand their fate over to the Army, she said, but they embraced it together.
Each of them was the first in their family to earn a college degree.
Both were naturalized citizens - he from Mexico, she from Guatemala.
No one from either family had served in the military before.
"Part of us thought we had never done anything to say, 'We love this country. We want to give something back,' " Helga said.
He entered the delayed entry program in November 2002. That meant he had a year to report for duty, but Aguayo couldn't wait. He reported for duty in January 2003, just as about 150,000 American troops were deploying for the invasion of Iraq.
"He was so eager," Helga said. "It was like 'We're giving something back.' I think our whole family felt that."
Suddenly, Helga's grandmother looked up from her knitting.
"Not me," she interjected, speaking in Spanish. "I cried a lot. I didn't want him to go in the Army."
Helga translated, adding, "I never knew that."
Before finishing boot camp, Aguayo began to agree with his wife's grandmother.
Helga watched the shift in outlook through the letters he sent home.
"The first time he held an M-16, he sent me a letter that said it was really hard for him to pull the trigger," she said. "And when he finally did, he felt the earth tremble beneath him and he put the gun down and he cried and said, 'I am training to kill.' "
He tried to brush off the feelings, chalking them up to separation anxieties and normal adjustments to military training.
"As time progressed it just got more difficult," Helga said. "I had seen the change I had seen, 'I'm going to go to the Army and I am going to serve and I'm going to do great things,' and I had seen the slow transformation."
As his first deployment to Iraq approached, Agustín had an epiphany during a shooting drill in which soldiers trained to distinguish between "friendlies" and insurgents.
He "said 'I can't kill. I just can't do it,' " Helga said. "I don't think anyone will know if they can kill until they're in that position or they train" for it.
By that time, Aguayo had been shipped to Schweinfurt and Helga joined him there with their twin daughters.
One evening, he ran across an article on the Internet about a conscientious objector.
"We had never heard the term conscientious objector. Soldiers don't know about conscientious objection," she said. Her husband said, "This is me!"
Aguayo applied for conscientious objector status before shipping out to Iraq. He worked as medic in the sick ward at Tikrit, stood guard duty and even went out on patrol, but he said he never loaded his weapon.
He received a Good Conduct medal, Helga said. Three days later he was charged with disobeying a direct order because he refused to pick up his weapon.
Six months after he arrived in Iraq, Aguayo's application for status as a conscientious objector was denied. The reason they eventually squeezed from the brass - he did not claim a specific church and therefore could not cite religious beliefs as reason for conscientious objection.
"My husband says, 'It's absurd to think that because I don't identify with a church, that doesn't mean that I don't have a good morality that I can't stand up and say 'I believe in this,' " Helga said.
While her husband raised his objection to war, his wife was in Germany learning the ways of military life.
"When you join the military, you're told that it's all about the family - the recruiter says that, the Army says that," she said. "The truth is that it's not about the family. It's about completing the mission."
She saw some of her friends' husbands come home in coffins, she said. One of her closest friends, she said, threw herself from the third story, hoping she could stop her husband's deployment to Iraq.
The fall ruined the woman's leg and destroyed her marriage - the husband had been in the room when she jumped, but didn't try to stop her. He was deployed anyway.
"It's normal," Helga said. "War is not a warm and fuzzy thing. It's destructive - on both ends."
As her husband's conviction against the managed use of violence increased, Helga became convinced that he was right.
"I don't know how it would have been if it had gone the other way," she said. "I don't think I would have questioned if my husband had not."
But he did, and as she thought about it, she came to agree.
Now, she said, "I support him not just because I … love him but because I think he's right."
With help from the Military Counseling Network and American Voices Abroad: Military Project, he raised the money to open a habeas corpus case against the Army in Washington. The groups offer advice and guidance to military personnel in conflict with the institution.
His lawyers assert that he is being held illegally by the Army because his discharge as a conscientious objector should have been granted.
The case was rejected the first time around. His lawyers took it on to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Oral arguments in that case will be heard Nov. 21.
When Aguayo's unit was called up for redeployment to Iraq, and his enlistment contract was extended through the stop-loss program, he resolved not to return to the war zone - at any cost.
He missed the scheduled movement Sept. 1 and turned himself in to the authorities the next day.
His wife went with him, just as she had when he visited the recruiter and when he applied for objector status.
He expected to be court-martialed, she said, but that didn't happen.
"They said, 'You're going whether you like it or not. If needed we will take you by force. We will handcuff you and shackle you and put you on a plane.'
"They said they would put him in a cell until the plane was ready to leave," Helga said. "It was just stubbornness. There were soldiers that wanted to go that had never been, but (the Army) just wanted him."
Two sergeants brought him to the house to get his gear. His wife sat in the living room weeping.
"He said, 'They still think I'm going,' " Helga said. "I think that was the only thing he said to me that day."
His wife could see the strain on his face as her husband refused several times to gather his gear. Finally he appeared to acquiesce, then he slipped away, out the window, into the environs of Germany.
The next two weeks remain shrouded in mystery.
"To this day, I don't know what happened," his wife said.
He called her from the road but gave no details. When she arrived in the United States with her daughters, he was already in California. He said he was going to turn himself in and he did - on Sept. 26, after the news conference.
Now he faces the court-martial he expected, charged with two counts of going AWOL and one of missing a movement by design.
He could get up to two years, seven months' jail time and a dishonorable discharge, she said.
"I think that would be extremely harsh because he did everything he could, but the Army forced him to be a war resister," Helga said.
She insisted that the Aguayos have no political agenda.
"He's not doing it for self-glory or to bring the Army down or to bring (President George W.) Bush down. He's not against the war in Iraq. He's against supporting war, period," his wife said.
"I'm proud that my husband was in the Army and I have the most respect for people who can do it and who dedicate their lives to it. They're following through on their belief and I respect that and I think it's honorable. But it's just not for our family. … There has to be another way to solve our problems. There has to. We're the most powerful country in the world."
The Aguayos' perspective on their continuing case can be followed at http://www.aguayodefense.org.
http://www.avpress.com/n/04/1004_s1.hts
PALMDALE - Helga Aguayo said she had no idea her husband would slip out the bedroom window of their apartment in Schweinfurt, Germany, in order to elude redeployment with his U.S. Army unit. He said later that he fled because he morally objects to war.
"I went back there and to my shock the window was open, the screen was off and he was not there," she said.
Spc. Agustín Aguayo, 34, an Army medic from Palmdale, served a one-year tour in Iraq without loading his weapon.
Joining the small number of troops who have refused movement to the war on the basis of moral objections, Aguayo said, at a news conference in Los Angeles last week, that he could not go back to war because he believes killing is wrong.
After the news conference, where he was flanked by anti-war activists, Aguayo turned himself in at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin.
Aguayo arrived back in Frankfurt Tuesday at 11:45 a.m. local time. From there, he was taken to Schweinfurt for processing. He may be sent on to Kuwait or Iraq for possible court-martial.
Helga Aguayo spoke to a Valley Press reporter at her grandmother's house in Palmdale, relating how the family's lives have changed since her husband elected to refuse further association with war.
Her husband was not always an opponent of war, she said, but he discovered during training that he would never be able to kill another person.
After seeing the casualties of war in Iraq - both Iraqi and American military - he decided he could not participate in any capacity in war - even as a medic saving lives.
The military chapter of the Aguayo family's story started four years ago in Palmdale.
Helga and Agustín each had earned an associate's degree from Antelope Valley College, Helga said.
She studied computer science and got a job with the A.V. Hope Foundation, supporting people with HIV.
Aguayo graduated with honors in the business administration program and started working the night shift at Home Depot.
"He was at a crossroads in his life. … He wanted a job that gave him fulfillment," she said. "He wanted to do something great."
One day Aguayo, then 31 years old, heard a radio spot for the Army Reserve and came home with a sparkle in his eye.
They went to the recruiter together. He encouraged Aguayo to enlist in active service.
"It sounds great," Helga said. "You would do wonderful things. … We really wanted to do a great thing."
It was a difficult decision to hand their fate over to the Army, she said, but they embraced it together.
Each of them was the first in their family to earn a college degree.
Both were naturalized citizens - he from Mexico, she from Guatemala.
No one from either family had served in the military before.
"Part of us thought we had never done anything to say, 'We love this country. We want to give something back,' " Helga said.
He entered the delayed entry program in November 2002. That meant he had a year to report for duty, but Aguayo couldn't wait. He reported for duty in January 2003, just as about 150,000 American troops were deploying for the invasion of Iraq.
"He was so eager," Helga said. "It was like 'We're giving something back.' I think our whole family felt that."
Suddenly, Helga's grandmother looked up from her knitting.
"Not me," she interjected, speaking in Spanish. "I cried a lot. I didn't want him to go in the Army."
Helga translated, adding, "I never knew that."
Before finishing boot camp, Aguayo began to agree with his wife's grandmother.
Helga watched the shift in outlook through the letters he sent home.
"The first time he held an M-16, he sent me a letter that said it was really hard for him to pull the trigger," she said. "And when he finally did, he felt the earth tremble beneath him and he put the gun down and he cried and said, 'I am training to kill.' "
He tried to brush off the feelings, chalking them up to separation anxieties and normal adjustments to military training.
"As time progressed it just got more difficult," Helga said. "I had seen the change I had seen, 'I'm going to go to the Army and I am going to serve and I'm going to do great things,' and I had seen the slow transformation."
As his first deployment to Iraq approached, Agustín had an epiphany during a shooting drill in which soldiers trained to distinguish between "friendlies" and insurgents.
He "said 'I can't kill. I just can't do it,' " Helga said. "I don't think anyone will know if they can kill until they're in that position or they train" for it.
By that time, Aguayo had been shipped to Schweinfurt and Helga joined him there with their twin daughters.
One evening, he ran across an article on the Internet about a conscientious objector.
"We had never heard the term conscientious objector. Soldiers don't know about conscientious objection," she said. Her husband said, "This is me!"
Aguayo applied for conscientious objector status before shipping out to Iraq. He worked as medic in the sick ward at Tikrit, stood guard duty and even went out on patrol, but he said he never loaded his weapon.
He received a Good Conduct medal, Helga said. Three days later he was charged with disobeying a direct order because he refused to pick up his weapon.
Six months after he arrived in Iraq, Aguayo's application for status as a conscientious objector was denied. The reason they eventually squeezed from the brass - he did not claim a specific church and therefore could not cite religious beliefs as reason for conscientious objection.
"My husband says, 'It's absurd to think that because I don't identify with a church, that doesn't mean that I don't have a good morality that I can't stand up and say 'I believe in this,' " Helga said.
While her husband raised his objection to war, his wife was in Germany learning the ways of military life.
"When you join the military, you're told that it's all about the family - the recruiter says that, the Army says that," she said. "The truth is that it's not about the family. It's about completing the mission."
She saw some of her friends' husbands come home in coffins, she said. One of her closest friends, she said, threw herself from the third story, hoping she could stop her husband's deployment to Iraq.
The fall ruined the woman's leg and destroyed her marriage - the husband had been in the room when she jumped, but didn't try to stop her. He was deployed anyway.
"It's normal," Helga said. "War is not a warm and fuzzy thing. It's destructive - on both ends."
As her husband's conviction against the managed use of violence increased, Helga became convinced that he was right.
"I don't know how it would have been if it had gone the other way," she said. "I don't think I would have questioned if my husband had not."
But he did, and as she thought about it, she came to agree.
Now, she said, "I support him not just because I … love him but because I think he's right."
With help from the Military Counseling Network and American Voices Abroad: Military Project, he raised the money to open a habeas corpus case against the Army in Washington. The groups offer advice and guidance to military personnel in conflict with the institution.
His lawyers assert that he is being held illegally by the Army because his discharge as a conscientious objector should have been granted.
The case was rejected the first time around. His lawyers took it on to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Oral arguments in that case will be heard Nov. 21.
When Aguayo's unit was called up for redeployment to Iraq, and his enlistment contract was extended through the stop-loss program, he resolved not to return to the war zone - at any cost.
He missed the scheduled movement Sept. 1 and turned himself in to the authorities the next day.
His wife went with him, just as she had when he visited the recruiter and when he applied for objector status.
He expected to be court-martialed, she said, but that didn't happen.
"They said, 'You're going whether you like it or not. If needed we will take you by force. We will handcuff you and shackle you and put you on a plane.'
"They said they would put him in a cell until the plane was ready to leave," Helga said. "It was just stubbornness. There were soldiers that wanted to go that had never been, but (the Army) just wanted him."
Two sergeants brought him to the house to get his gear. His wife sat in the living room weeping.
"He said, 'They still think I'm going,' " Helga said. "I think that was the only thing he said to me that day."
His wife could see the strain on his face as her husband refused several times to gather his gear. Finally he appeared to acquiesce, then he slipped away, out the window, into the environs of Germany.
The next two weeks remain shrouded in mystery.
"To this day, I don't know what happened," his wife said.
He called her from the road but gave no details. When she arrived in the United States with her daughters, he was already in California. He said he was going to turn himself in and he did - on Sept. 26, after the news conference.
Now he faces the court-martial he expected, charged with two counts of going AWOL and one of missing a movement by design.
He could get up to two years, seven months' jail time and a dishonorable discharge, she said.
"I think that would be extremely harsh because he did everything he could, but the Army forced him to be a war resister," Helga said.
She insisted that the Aguayos have no political agenda.
"He's not doing it for self-glory or to bring the Army down or to bring (President George W.) Bush down. He's not against the war in Iraq. He's against supporting war, period," his wife said.
"I'm proud that my husband was in the Army and I have the most respect for people who can do it and who dedicate their lives to it. They're following through on their belief and I respect that and I think it's honorable. But it's just not for our family. … There has to be another way to solve our problems. There has to. We're the most powerful country in the world."
The Aguayos' perspective on their continuing case can be followed at http://www.aguayodefense.org.
So I'll just lie down and wait for the dream
Where I'm not ugly and you're lookin' at me
Where I'm not ugly and you're lookin' at me
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