By Henry Mark Holzer
As the credulous are joyous over the safe return of
Sgt. Bowe Berghdal after nearly five years of Haqqani captivity, and as every
hour the Internet traffic swells with questions about whether Bergdahl was a
deserter, sadly, if it’s the latter he probably won’t have too much to worry
about.
Not only because Obama, Hagel, and others occupying
dark corners of the administration now have a vested interest in Bergdahl and the
POW narrative that they’ve wrapped him in, and not only because of the parades
and keys to the city that will be proffered, but because the Pentagon’s track
record of severely punishing desertion leaves much to be desired.
In
World War II although some 21,000 military personnel received sentences of one
kind or another for desertion, only 49 of them were sentenced to the death
penalty. Of that group, only one was
actually executed: Private Eddie Slovik.
Slovik,
a juvenile delinquent who had done some jail time, was drafted in 1943 and
shipped to France in mid-1944.
He
deserted, was court-martialed, and sentenced to death. A clemency appeal to
General Eisenhower failed, and to deter other desertions Ike allowed Slovik to
be executed (the first, and last, American soldier to suffer the death penalty
since the Civil War).
It
has been said by some that Marine Private First Class Robert Garwood, who spent
some fourteen years first with the Viet Cong and then with the North
Vietnamese, was "the nation’s last prisoner in Vietnam." The label,
however, is misleading. Calling Garwood a "prisoner" not only
mischaracterizes most of his time with the Communists, but also denigrates
those Americans who were bona fide prisoners of war.
We
shall see if the POW label applied to Bowe Bergdhal is similarly a
mischaracterization.
The
Garwood story began with his driving into a nest of Viet Cong guerillas near Da
Nang, South Vietnam in late September, 1965. Soon after, he was taken to the
first of what would be several primitive Viet Cong prison camps in the jungles
of South Vietnam.
Years
later, when our prisoners of war were repatriated, those who had survived
incarceration in the camps in which Garwood lived were extensively debriefed.
"[T]he stories told by the prisoners to their debriefing officers [about
Garwood and his conduct] were first-person observations, vehement and detailed.
Many of the incidents told by different POWs dovetailed and echoed perfectly.
And there was another element. The accusations of malfeasance that came out of
the debriefing tapes did not all come from hard-core officers, but from
foot-soldiers, a warrant officer; a doctor—from blacks, whites, from Hispanic
soldiers. From Monika Schwinn, the German nurse who was unceremoniously dumped
into one of the camps where Garwood was installed, came corroboration, even,
from a woman. All the voices were united on one point: Garwood had chosen to
give his allegiance to the enemy, and in this he was alone, separate from the
other prisoners." (Groom and Spencer, Conversations with the Enemy).
In
light of these debriefing reports, it was no surprise that when Garwood finally
decided to repatriate himself some fourteen years after his disappearance, the
Marine Corps stood him before a general court-martial.
Charged
with several serious crimes—among them desertion, punishable by death—somehow
Garwood’s lawyers were able to enlist the sympathy of the military judge. After
lengthy pre-trial proceedings and days of actual trial, the judge—openly
admitting that "I would also say that I have expressed, even publicly on occasion,
that I do have a great deal of sympathy for the accused and in fact have some
empathy for him"—dismissed, for want of sufficient evidence, he opined,
the charges of desertion, soliciting U.S. soldiers to throw down their arms,
and verbally abusing a prisoner.
That
left Garwood facing two charges: collaboration with the enemy, and physical
abuse of an American prisoner. It took the jury only two days to find him
guilty on both.
On
the collaborating charge—the principal crime based on the equivocal evidence of
Garwood’s alleged "desertion," as compared with his mostly undisputed
conduct in the prison camps—he was convicted of literally dozens of acts. They
fell into five categories: (1) serving as an interpreter while American
prisoners were being forcibly indoctrinated with Communist political
propaganda; (2) informing on the prisoners; (3) interrogating the prisoners on
such subjects as military matters and escape plans; (4) indoctrinating
prisoners with the Communist party line, and suggesting they cross over to the
Communists; (5) acting as a guard over his American countrymen to prevent
escapes. On the physical abuse charge, Garwood was convicted of striking an
American prisoner.
In
less than an hour, the military jury imposed sentence.
Although
Garwood faced life in prison for his fourteen years of egregious conduct
against American prisoners of war and giving aid and comfort to our Communist
enemies, his fellow Marines sentenced him to reduction in rank to private (from
Private First Class!), forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonorable
discharge.
Not
a single day of prison time.
So
Slovik, who deserted, was executed, while Garwood, who spent thirteen years collaborating
with the enemy, walked.
Which
brings me to a more recent case, that of Charles Robert Jenkins.
In
the early morning of January 5, 1965, Sergeant Jenkins was on patrol in the
Korean Demilitarized Zone—a wide buffer of land running across the entire width
of the peninsula—separating North from South Korea. Telling his buddies that he
was going to investigate a noise, Jenkins disappeared. The North Koreans hailed
him as a defector, a characterization consistent with what Jenkins had
apparently written to his family.
In
1982, Jenkins appeared in a North Korean propaganda film. According to his
relatives, he taught English at a Communist school.
Some
40 years after his desertion, Jenkins, his Japanese wife (who years earlier had
been kidnapped by the North Koreans) and two daughters surfaced in Indonesia,
which has no extradition treaty with the United States. From there Jenkins and
his family traveled to Japan, where the government interceded with the United
States on the deserter’s behalf, requesting a pardon because he had married a
Japanese woman in North Korea.
From
the beginning, our government talked tough. Jenkins was an army deserter. We
wanted him back. No deals would be made. Etc., etc., etc. Not having been discharged
from the United States Army, a court-martial still had jurisdiction over
Jenkins. Yes, sir!
Soon
after his arrival in Japan, Jenkins, then in his mid-sixties and ailing,
allegedly expressed a need to clear his conscience. Accordingly, on September
11 (!), 2004, he reported to Camp Zama, northwest of Yokohama, smartly saluting
to the Military Police.
In
writing an essay about Jenkins at that time, I raised the question of what
ought to be done with him. I wrote the following:
Clearly, he will not suffer Eddie Slovik’s fate. But, like
Garwood, he may escape meaningful punishment. There have been reports that
Jenkins may be able to make a plea deal in return for providing information
about North Korea. If such a deal materializes, it would be a fig leaf for the
army’s unwillingness to court-martial Jenkins. Even if the aging deserter . . .
had useful intelligence information—which is highly unlikely, given the nature
of his work in North Korea—it would be wrong for the army to ignore Jenkins’
nearly forty-year residence in that country.
The army is duty bound to court-martial Jenkins in a forum
where he can present any defense he may have—including the argument that,
instead of having deserted, he was kidnapped. If army lawyers cannot prove
their case beyond a reasonable doubt, Jenkins goes free, and would probably
receive substantial back pay. If, however, prosecutors can prove that Jenkins
deserted from the front line facing Communist North Korea, he should be
punished by the same court-martial panel that convicts him.
The nature of that punishment is less important than that
it be imposed. The time for mercy, if Jenkins deserves any, is after
conviction, not in the decision to prosecute or not.
Beginning with the Korean War, there have been too many
examples of military leniency. Scores of soldiers who collaborated in Chinese
prison camps were never prosecuted, and those who were convicted served little
time. In Vietnam, countless incidents of insubordination and even assaults on
superior officers went unpunished. A small group of collaborators in the
infamous Hanoi Hilton, dubbed the "Peace Committee," were never even
charged, let alone punished. More recently, the abuse of Iraqi captives in the
Abu Ghraib prison led to charges—but only after the abuse became a public
scandal.
It is clear that, too often, the armed services are not only
unwilling to wash their dirty laundry in public, but unwilling to wash it at
all. (Witness the Navy’s recent refusal to investigate challenges raised about
the legitimacy of John Kerry’s medals.)
Let us hope that in the Jenkins case, the United States Army
reverses this unfortunate trend.
Jenkins
was court-martialed.
He
received a four-decade-overdue dishonorable discharge.
And
30-days confinement!
