Posted on 04/16/2005 8:22:15 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
The family of a soldier imprisoned after refusing to work claiming he was a conscientious objector was surprised this week by news that he was transferred from a prison in Germany to one in Oklahoma.
Former Army Spc. Blake Lemoine, 23, was given a bad-conduct discharge and seven-month prison term last month after being convicted of willfully disobeying orders he received while working in supply for the 596th Maintenance Company in Darmstadt, Germany. He was transferred from a military prison in Mannheim, Germany, to one in Fort Sill, Okla., on Monday, according to an Army spokesman.
“Shock,” was the way Lemoine’s wife described hearing the news from Lemoine’s mother.
“I had no clue. No one had told me anything,” the wife, Alayna Lemoine, said in a telephone interview Thursday.
Alayna Lemoine said Army officials had told her that her husband would serve his full prison term in Germany.
She speculated that the Army moved her husband because of a protest Sunday she and about 40 others held outside the U.S. Army Confinement Facility-Europe on Coleman Barracks in Mannheim.
Some groups in Germany support Lemoine and his efforts to get conscientious objector status. Lemoine asked for the status, saying his religious beliefs as a pagan priest conflicted with things he witnessed while deployed in Iraq for a year.
Sunday’s protest remained peaceful and resulted in no arrests.
An Army spokesman said the protest was probably not a factor in Lemoine’s move. The prison in Mannheim is a temporary holding facility, and prisoners there are routinely flown to more permanent prisons in the United States, said Master Sgt. Derrick Crawford, a spokesman for the 21st Theater Support Command, which oversees the prison.
“I don’t think it had anything to do with the protest,” Crawford said.
The move also upset friends of Blake Lemoine who had been trying to visit him, Alayna Lemoine said.
“They wanted to see him,” Alayna Lemoine said. “Not everybody in Blake’s unit hates him.”
Blake Lemoine’s mother, Brenda Lemoine, was the first in his family to find out about the move when he called her on Tuesday from Oklahoma, she said in a telephone interview from her home in Louisiana.
She was also surprised by the move, she said, because Army officials told her that her son would remain in Germany for his entire prison term.
She can damn well speculate all she wants, she can rant to the media that it was their actions that caused the movement of the prisoner but she is so way off base it is not funny. Just blah blah blah!
Why he was not brought to Ft Leavenworth, I will never know. It is brand new, has the room and frankly that is where he should be and not at Sill.
All though Sill has excellent confinement barracks.
No one had told her anything ... again I say blah blah blah.
Sorry folks, just getting tired of these news items and perhaps we the public need to get involved. How and what .. well open to thoughts.
CO status is just well horse pucky, there are legitimate COs out there ... but when a guy/gal uses this as a reason to either go AWOL or something equally un allowed under the UCMJ then throw him in a cell and toss the key .... far away.
PING
bad-conduct discharge and seven-month prison term for claiming he was a conscientious objector
I'm sure the standards for becoming a pagan priest are very rigorous, with many years of studying. No, it probably requires little more than a fine knowledge of "mind-enhancing chemicals."
Oklahoma for the summer. Should be warm enough to give the "pagan priest" a taste of what he has to look forward to.
One thing that she hasn't considered is that his transfer could have been at the request of German officials. A lot of the German troops support our troops on the bases over there. Both American troops and German troops are just a little sick of the handful of people outside of the base towns coming in for protests. A lot of these small communities are still trying to appease the US to keep troops in their area.
Don't you have to establish CO status before joining the military? I seriously doubt there's anyway to become one after the fact (particularly in time of war).
Since we have a volunteer force, I think that CO status is a joke. If we had conscription and someone had legitimate reasons for wanting to not serve in the military, then I would be an understanding fellow on this point. In WWII, COs served in non-combat roles or were kept stateside to work as fire jumpers, etc. If you voluntarily sign-up to serve in the ARMED forces, you should damned well expect that someday you may b called upon to kill people and break things. The armed forces are not a country club where you go to play for a few years.
He probably became one the day he found out he was deploying again.
When Sgt. AQGeiger's company got orders to deploy to Iraq the second time, a couple of soldiers who had already been to Iraq once very suddenly developed very poorly-faked depression.
I was in an Infantry unit in Germany from 80-83. We had a guy get sentenced in a court martial to some time and one of the platoon sergeants had to escort him up to Mannheim. Now this platoon sergeant was a huge guy, 'Nam vet, paratrooper, and the welcome that the convicted soldier got at Mannheim rattled this guy something fierce. And he was only dropping a prisoner off!
OCS (Old Coleman Stockade)
A Conscientous Objector is a coward.
It is no crime to be afraid.
It is a crime to let fear keep you from your duty.
I can understand allowing someone to opt for "conscientious objector" status if there is a draft. But sorry, I just don't buy it in an ALL-VOLUNTEER military!
***Should be warm enough to give the "pagan priest" a taste of what he has to look forward to.**
Didn't the Indians call it "the hot land"?
WTF is a "pagan" priest? What does he do sacrifice animals or pray to the trees? I mean what is this crap?
Except in cases of established and long-held beliefs or religious practices (Amish, Quakers, etc.), I've always believed that this conscientious objector label is nonsense. And with the all volunteer army, it is even more ridiculous, why do these "conscientious objectors" join the military in the first place if they are against war; I can understand during the draft, but now? And this man is refusing to WORK, not fight, during WW II the conscientious objectors worked in non-combat positions and this guy should too.
If someone is a coward, then they should be a man and admit that they are a coward; I find it very difficult to have respect for someone that obviously has no respect for himself, his fellow servicemen or his country. I think this deserter (because that is what he would be if given the opportunity) and all of the other deserters should be forced to sit in an auditorium for 18 hours a day and learn about the life of Sergeant Alvin York a true conscientious objector who also had the courage to become one of the most (if not the most) heroic American soldiers ever.
***A Conscientous Objector is a coward. **
They should have found a firefight somewhere and kicked his a$$ out in the middle of it,
"You are going up to the front..You may get killed BUT YOU ARE GOING UP TO THE FRONT!......PATTON, the movie.
Jailing volunteers who refuse to continue serving their contract for whatever reason is a throw back to conscription armies. Oh, yes I would charge them some sort of penalty for cancellation of contract.
-Thinking out of the box for the new millennium -
You lost me right there. Incredibly naive and dangerous ...
And to think that I used to be threatened with being grounded for life. I didn't do anything even close to what this guy has done. Sheesh.
No, it's not. Just like you said, it's a contract. An enlistee knows what are the terms of his contract. And he knows what are the penalties for failing to fulfill the terms of that contract. If he didn't want to have to fulfill those terms or be held accountable for failure to comply with the contract he wilfully signed, then he should never have enlisted.
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