Non-Combatant, Sentenced to Jail by U.S. Marine Corps

A United States Marine Corps court-martial has sentenced a Marine, who came to a belief in non-combatancy shortly after signing a two-year re-enlistment, to seven months in jail, rather than separating him from the military. Observers say this is a highly unusual outcome for such a case, which is usually handled less drastically.

Marine Corporal Joel David Klimkewicz, a native of Birch Run, Michigan, is married and has a 3-year-old daughter. He will be imprisoned, suffer a reduction in rank to private, and given a Bad Conduct Discharge from the Marine Corps, according to the Dec. 14 verdict of a court-martial held at Camp Lejeune, one of the nation's largest Marine Corps bases.

"In 36 years of dealing with these cases, this is the first one I've seen go so far," said Richard O. Stenbakken, a retired U.S. Army chaplain and Seventh-day Adventist church pastor who, until recently, headed Chaplaincy Ministries for the 13.4-million member church.

Adventist church attorney Mitchell Tyner said, "The Marine Corps, in its zeal to prevent others from avoiding combat, has totally misread this soldier and the result is a serious miscarriage of justice. We hope the Corps will reconsider the total disproportional nature of the sentence and reduce it immediately."

Klimkewicz, who experienced a religious awakening while on a shipboard assignment in the Marines, formally joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the summer of 2003. Before his conversion, Klimkewicz, by his own admission, led a less-than-exemplary life. Afterward, his wife, a Japanese citizen who has a temporary residence permit and is seeking permanent resident status in the United States, as well as his coworkers and superiors in the Marines, noticed a marked change in his behavior and attitude.

Klimkewicz told Marine Corps officials that he was willing to serve, but not to carry a weapon or to take a life. The Seventh-day Adventist Church supports non-combatancy for its members who serve in the military, but leaves such decisions to a member's individual conscience.

In such cases, a servicemember is often given an assignment that supports his views, or is given an administrative discharge from the military. Klimkewicz volunteered for two separate deployments where he would help clear land mines in Iraq, a task in which he would not have to carry a weapon, but superiors refused him. He was charged with "disobeying a lawful order" from a superior, Major Kirk Cordova, executive officer of the Second Combat Engineers Battalion of the 2nd Marine Division, to carry a weapon.

Stenbakken, and attorney Tyner, are asking the Marine Corps to revoke the sentence imposed on Klimkewicz, which can be done either through an appeals process or by the commanding general of the 2nd Marine Division. The two believe no useful purpose is served by jailing the corporal: "This is not a man who needs to be 'reformed,'" Stenbakken said. "He's turned his life around and his peers say so."

Local Adventist church members in the Jacksonville, North Carolina area have indicated they will help Klemkewicz's wife and daughter as needed through this situation.

With approximately 114,000 congregations in 203 countries and areas of the world, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has long advocated non-violence and peaceful solutions to conflicts.

Does this sound uncalled for or is it just me. I have read about other non-combatants like Desmond T. Doss who recieved the Congressional Medal of Honor. Reading this just make me think about Desmond T. Doss and what he did and about true freedom of religion.

Below is more about Doss....

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It really shouldn't have surprised anyone in Doss's company that he would suggest prayer. Doss was always praying...or reading his Bible. From the first day of training everyone could tell he was different. A devout Seventh-Day Adventist, the first night Doss knelt beside his bunk in the barracks, oblivious to the taunts around him and the boots they threw his way, to spend his time talking to God. Regularly he pulled the small Bible his new wife had given him for a wedding gift, and read it as well. Among the men of the unit, disdain turned to resentment. Doss refused to train or work on Saturday, the Lord's Sabbath. Though he felt no reservation about caring for the medical needs of the men or otherwise helping them on the Sabbath, he refused to violate it. The fact that he worked overtime to make up for it the rest of the week made little difference. Doss was teased, harassed, and ridiculed. And it only got worse.

When it came time for the men of Doss' training company to begin qualifications on weaponry, Doss refused. He had entered the service as a medic, to heal the wounded, not to kill. As a small boy he had seen a poster showing Cain standing over the body of his dead brother. From that moment on Doss determined that he would never, under any circumstances, take another life.

So what do you do with a soldier who won't train on Saturday, eat meat, or carry a gun or bayonet? Doss' commanding officer knew what to do. Paperwork was initiated to declare him unstable, a miss-fit, and wash him out of military service with a Section-8 discharge as "unsuitable for military service." But Doss wanted to serve his country, he just refused to kill. He performed all of his other duties with dedication, was an exemplary a soldier in every other way. At his hearing he told the board, "I'd be a very poor Christian if I accepted a discharge implying that I was mentally off because of my religion. I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I can't accept that kind of a discharge." So the Army was "stuck" with Desmond Doss.

Doss returned to his fellow soldiers and they weren't any happier to still be stuck with him either. One promised Doss, and not in jest, that when the soldiers faced the inevitable combat with the enemy, "I'll kill you myself." Doss didn't doubt him. That first taste of combat came at Guam, where Doss began to prove his courage in going to any length to treat and care for his fellow soldiers. Then came Leyte.

Time after time at Leyte Doss braved enemy fire to go to the wounded, and to remove them to safety. Once he darted into the open to treat and rescue a wounded man even while the area was alive with sniper fire. From a distance his fellow soldiers watched in horror as a Japanese sniper leveled his rifle at the fearless medic. Because of the sniper's position they could not return fire for fear of injuring some of their own. Doss treated the wounded man, evacuated him to the rear, and returned to his position. One of the sergeants told him, "Doss, we expected to see you killed any second. We couldn't shoot the sniper without killing our own men, and he had his machine gun aimed right at you. Didn't you see him?"

(Years later a missionary in Japan related the story of Doss' brush with death that day. After the service a Japanese man in the back of the room told one of the deacons, "That could very well have been me. I was there, and I remember having a soldier in my gun site, but I couldn't pull the trigger.") Doss not only survived Leyte, for his repeated heroism he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. So as Corporal Doss stood before the men of Company B at the base of the Maeda Escarpment on Okinawa, they were beginning to believe in the prayers of the medic whose only weapon was his Bible.

"Time to go men," Lieutenant Goronto told his troops. Doss had prayed, finished with his Amen, and the rest would be in the hands of God. The soldiers struggled up the incline, reaching the sheer face that comprised the last fifty feet. Naval cargo nets were used to scale its surface. Upon reaching the summit, Company B was immediately pinned down by heavy enemy fire. To the left Company A was fighting to scale their sector as well. The first five men were killed and casualties mounted to the point that Company A could proceed no further. Headquarters radioed Company B for a report of their own casualties. So far there had been none. So the order was given that Company B would have to take the escarpment themselves. Sweeping across the escarpment the men of Doss' company engaged the enemy in a fierce struggle, knocking out eight or nine pillboxes. By day's end they emerged victorious. Not a single man was killed and the only wounds were sustained by one soldier in Company B whose hand was damaged by a falling rock. It was incredible...even miraculous.

The next day a follow-up inquiry was made to determine how Company B had accomplished the miraculous assault on the Maeda Escarpment without a single casualty. A photographer arrived to take a picture and Lieutenant Goronto sent Desmond to the top to pose. (The photo at right is the US Army photo taken that day, and Desmond Doss is the man at the top.) As far back as Army headquarters in the States, everyone asked how Company B had pulled it off. No one could find a reasonable explanation. Finally, with no other way to conclude the report, the official answer was filed...all the way back to the United States. The official answer:

"Doss prayed!"

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He was a company aid man when the 1st Battalion assaulted a jagged escarpment 400 feet high. As our troops gained the summit, a heavy concentration of artillery, mortar and machinegun fire crashed into them, inflicting approximately 75 casualties and driving the others back. Pfc. Doss refused to seek cover and remained in the fire-swept area with the many stricken, carrying them one by one to the edge of the escarpment and there lowering them on a rope-supported litter down the face of a cliff to friendly hands. On 2 May, he exposed himself to heavy rifle and mortar fire in rescuing a wounded man 200 yards forward of the lines on the same escarpment; and two days later he treated four men who had been cut down while assaulting a strongly defended cave, advancing through a shower of grenades to within 8 yards of enemy forces in a cave's mouth, where he dressed his comrades' wounds before making four separate trips under fire to evacuate them to safety. On 5 May, he unhesitatingly braved enemy shelling and small arms fire to assist an artillery officer. He applied bandages, moved his patient to a spot that offered protection from small arms fire and, while artillery and mortar shells fell close by, painstakingly administered plasma. Later that day, when an American was severely wounded by fire from a cave, Pfc. Doss crawled to him where he had fallen 25 feet from the enemy position, rendered aid, and carried him 100 yards to safety while continually exposed to enemy fire. On 21 May, in a night attack on high ground near Shuri, he remained in exposed territory while the rest of his company took cover, fearlessly risking the chance that he would be mistaken for an infiltrating Japanese and giving aid to the injured until he was himself seriously wounded in the legs by the explosion of a grenade. Rather than call another aid man from cover, he cared for his own injuries and waited 5 hours before litter bearers reached him and started carrying him to cover. The trio was caught in an enemy tank attack and Pfc. Doss, seeing a more critically wounded man nearby, crawled off the litter; and directed the bearers to give their first attention to the other man. Awaiting the litter bearers' return, he was again struck, this time suffering a compound fracture of one arm. With magnificent fortitude he bound a rifle stock to his shattered arm as a splint and then crawled 300 yards over rough terrain to the aid station. Through his outstanding bravery and unflinching determination in the face of desperately dangerous conditions Pfc. Doss saved the lives of many soldiers. His name became a symbol throughout the 77th Infantry Division for outstanding gallantry far above and beyond the call of duty.

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