The Resister
http://www.5280.com/issues/2007/0712/feature.php?pageID=928
Mark Wilkerson went to Iraq a true believer: He supported the
president, the war, and the troops he was fighting with. But what he
saw on the ground forced him to question everything he'd ever
knownand to decide he'd never go back.
By Patrick Doyle, Photograph by Marc Piscotty
December 2007
On Sunday, December 27, 2004, the postholiday Colorado Springs
traffic slowed as U.S. Army Specialist Mark Wilkerson steered a white
2001 Chevy Cavalier through town, his wife, Sarah, seated to his
right. He waited for the light at Briargate Boulevard, turned left,
and wound his way through the north part of the city before turning
into the parking lot of the Days Inn. The hotel was sandwiched
between a McDonald's and a KFC/Taco Bell. At least there'll be plenty
of places to eat, Mark thought. He and Sarah stepped out of the car
into the biting winter air, popped the trunk, and unloaded two duffel
bags and a suitcase full of clothes.
One week earlier, Mark and Sarah had packed up their two-bedroom
apartment near Fort Hood, Texas, put most of their belongings in a
small storage unit, and told their friends and the soldiers in Mark's
unit, the 401st Military Police Company, that they were headed to
Colorado Springs for Christmas. Mark was soon to be deployed to Iraq
for his second tour, and Sarah would be moving home with her family.
But as they had packed, Mark and Sarah were making other plans: Once
they got to the Springs, they'd change their cell phone numbers.
They'd re- register their cars in Colorado. And they'd clean out
their bank accountwithdrawing $500 a day from the ATM, until their
life savings, about $4,000, was in cash.
Inside the Days Inn lobby, they waited nervously as Mark's aunt
requested a room with one queen-size bed. After getting a key card,
Mark and Sarah hauled their luggage up to the room on the third
floor, where they dropped their stuffall of their possessions, at
least for the foreseeable futureon the shabby brown carpet. Sarah
unpacked a container of peanut butter, a few boxes of cereal, a loaf
of bread, and put a jar of jelly and a carton of milk into the tiny
fridge. Mark wandered over to the room's window; in the
late-afternoon light, he could see the parking lot and another hotel.
It was a dreary view, all cement and cars and fast-food restaurants
perched at the edge of the highway, but he preferred it to what he
saw beyond. There, in the distance, sat Colorado Springs' bastion of
military might, the United States Air Force Academy. The irony was
not lost on Mark. In eight days he would officially be AWOL, absent
without leave, and the Army would issue a warrant for his arrest.
Mark struggled to stay awake. He'd been perched atop the ASV, a
15-ton cross between a Humvee and a Stryker combat vehicle, since 6
a.m., and it was nearly noon. He scanned the crowd at the bus stop
across from the Iraqi police station his unit was defending, and
watched what must have been 90 locals cram into a bus driven by an
adolescent boy.
Damn, it was hot.
One-hundred-and-twelve degrees hot. Another summer day in Tikrit.
It was June 2003, three months after the invasion of Iraq. Mark had
hated guarding the police station since his company had drawn the
bullshit assignment: The Iraqi police couldn't be trusted, and the
station was nearly impossible to defend. A chest-high concrete wall
was situated just behind the bus stop; above the wall, an apartment
complex loomed. Both were prime spots for launching attacks against
the U.S. soldiers. Even holding the beefy .50 caliber machine gun
that was mounted on the turret of the ASV, Mark felt exposed.
In an effort to find insurgents, whoever they wereand at that point,
it wasn't at all clearMark's company had been raiding local homes,
whole streets at a time. They'd bust into houses, throw everyone on
the floor, and tear the place apart searching for anything that might
be a weapon. If they found so much as a knife, they'd zip-tie all the
men in the house and drag them out, their mothers and wives and
children crying in Arabic for their release. The soldiers ignored
them, tossed the men into jail, rarely filling out the proper
paperwork, and not knowing, or caring, if the men were guilty. It was
a vicious cycle: In trying to root out the bad guys, the troops'
scorched-earth approach was making more enemies. Everyone in Iraq, it
seemed, hated the Americans.
Now, in the turret, Mark tried to focus on the station, to not think
about the raids, about the fact that anyone in the crowd across the
street could be looking to kill him. But the long stretches of
inaction tested him; the heat made concentrating difficult. He
stripped off the top of his desert camouflage uniform and tossed it
to his feet, keeping his flak jacket strapped over his plain, brown T-shirt.
KA-BOOM.
The rocket screamed over Mark's head, and he saw the trail of smoke
floating a few feet above him. He jumped up, sweat pouring down his
chest and back, his hair standing on end, his body flush with
adrenaline. His hands were on his M249 SAW automatic machine gun as
he tried to follow the smoke back to an attacker. The RPG had come
from the wall behind the bus station, but Mark couldn't tell who
fired it. He thought about firing into the crowd, but restrained
himself. The bus crowd scattered, expecting a firefight.
Mark's squad, including Sergeant Matthew Dusenbery, Mark's team
leader, ran out from the police station. Dusenbery called out:
"Wilkerson, you OK?"
Mark's father, Mark Young, had been an active-duty soldier for 10
years before becoming a recruiter for the Army Reserve; Mark's former
stepfather, Terry Wilkerson, who had adopted Mark and his brother
Christopher in 1992, had been a staff sergeant in the Army; and
Mark's grandfather and grandmother served in the Navy and Marines,
respectively, during the Second World War. But as a young boy and
adolescent, Mark hadn't shown interest in the armed services. A
thoughtful, reserved teenager with cropped blond hair and warm, blue
eyes whose lids seemed to hang perpetually at half-mast, Mark had
been an A-minus student at Widefield High School in Colorado Springs,
where he busied himself with extracurricular activities. He wrestled.
He played the drums in the marching band. He was a member of the
debate team, and liked to argue the conservative point of view on
debate topics like military intervention and gay rights. Mark
volunteered as the chairman of Colorado Springs' Teen Action Council,
which sponsored citywide peace eventsone year a peace march, the
next a community teen dance. His senior year, the Teen Action Council
held a "What Does Peace Mean to Me?" art and writing contest for
elementary school children.
Mark had wanted to go to the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs
and had the grades, but he didn't think he could afford college. If
he joined the armed forces, however, the military would pay for his
schooling, and so, after his junior year, Mark visited the U.S. Army
recruiting station across the street from his high school. Mark liked
the idea of being a soldier, of serving the greater good, of serving
his country, and of becoming part of the family military history. He
wanted to be a police officer in the future, and the Army recruiter
told Mark that if he joined the Army he could be a military
policemana "peace officer"and could then become a civilian officer
after his service.
It seemed like a good plan to Mark, but he had yet to run it by his
girlfriend. While on the Widefield High debate team, Mark had met
Sarah James, a sweet, sharp junior at Air Academy High who had
girl-next-door looks. They'd immediately started dating, Sarah drawn
to Mark's eternal optimism and generous spirit, and Mark drawn to
Sarah's maturity and intelligence. She seemed wiser than everyone
else in high school and, like him, had avoided the typical scene of
drinking, smoking, and hooking up.
But Mark's plans to join the Army forced them to take stock of their
relationship, only five months after they'd started dating. They were
both 17 years old. The oldest of seven siblings, Sarah was a natural
nurturer and had planned to get an education degree and teach
elementary school. Mark convinced her that she would only have to put
her plans on hold temporarily, that she could take classes wherever
he ended up being based. Eventually, Sarah agreed. On a warm spring
night, a few hours after their senior prom, Mark, who had saved money
from his job delivering Chinese food to buy a ring, proposed to
Sarah. They would be married six months later in a small ceremony at
a Colorado Springs church, followed by a reception at a local
Veterans of Foreign Wars hall.
The young couple was excited for the future, but while their optimism
was unshakable, Mark's mother, Rebecca, wasn't as sanguine. She
reminded Mark about his work with the Teen Action Council, about all
the peace marches and dances. He was kind-hearted and sweet, not
prone to violencehe'd been the son that had resolved conflicts in
the house, breaking up fights between Christopher and their younger
brother, Shawn. Christopher, Mark's mom thought, would make a better
fit for the Armyhe was more athletic and aggressive. Mark was the
peacekeeper in the house.
"I don't think you're the right person for this," said Frank, his
mother's third husband, and the man who raised Mark through his teens.
"I can do this," Mark said. "I am the right person."
On January 16, 1996, Mark's stepfather, Terry Wilkerson, parked his
pickup truck down the block from Mark's house and clicked off his
headlights. He walked around the outside of the house and
methodically cut the phone lines, and then broke in through the
garage. Once inside the house, Terry, who had recently separated from
Rebecca, walked upstairs, an aluminum bat in one hand, a shotgun in
the other, and found Rebecca and her new boyfriend, Donald Turner, in
the master bedroom. Terry hit Rebecca in the head with the bat,
knocking her unconscious. He then went after Donald, hitting him in
the head and chest, continuously.
Rebecca, after regaining consciousness, screamed when she saw Terry
beating Donald. Hearing his mother's cries, Mark woke up and ran to
her bedroom door. Before Terry could hit Rebecca again, Mark, only 12
years old, lunged at the bat and knocked it out of Terry's hands,
giving his mom enough time to move out of the way. Mark then ran to
the phone to call 911; when he realized the lines had been cut, he
ran to the neighbors' house to make the call. Minutes later, police
officers arrived, found Terry kneeling beside a bloodied Rebecca, and
arrested him. Donald, who had severe head and upper-body injuries,
died later that night at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs. A year
and a half later, still awaiting trial, Terry phoned Mark from the
Pueblo Mental Health Institute and apologized. The next day, Terry
walked into a utility closet, wrapped a vacuum cord around his neck,
and hung himself.
After completing his first Iraq tour in March 2004, Mark was not the
same hopeful, optimistic young man Sarah had married. Sarah had known
that Mark's return to the States was not going to be easy. His phone
calls and letters from Iraq had become increasingly agitated during
the course of his tour. He argued against U.S. involvement in Iraq.
He told her that soldiers were dying for nothing. He wondered if the
war was just. One day, Mark had called Sarah in the early morning
hours, waking her from a deep sleep. "Whatever happens," he said, "if
I die here, you cannot let them say I died for my country. I do not
want to be just another soldier who they say died for something I
believed in." When he was home in November for R&Ra two-week,
mid-tour breakhe had been irritable and withdrawn. When his
seven-year-old stepsister, Ashley, said, "Mark, we're so proud of
you! You're our hero," his face had darkened. "I'm no hero," he said.
"I am no hero."
Mark's post-tour debriefing at Fort Hood was short and pro forma: a
quick physical and a 30-minute lecture on reentering civilian life.
There was also a brief meeting with a psychologist, a wink-wink
affair in which it was understood that soldiers with symptoms of
posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, would be rewarded with a stay
in the psych unit instead of being allowed to go home. Like most
soldiers, Mark chose to keep quiet, and he was set free for two weeks.
Back at his apartment, he hung his green battle dress uniform in the
closet, and put on his jeans and beat-up band T-shirts. He bought CDs
by the handful, and rented movies by the stack. He watched the news
relentlesslylocal news, political coverage, and everything he could
find on the Iraq war. He hadn't seen TV news or read an actual
newspaper when he was in the Middle East. Mired so long in the trees,
he was desperate to see the forest.
Mark had seemed glad to be home, but he was withdrawn. He brooded,
disappearing inside himself. Sarah tried to draw him out, to get him
to talk about Iraq, but he wouldn't discuss the war. She tried to be
happy, to make him happy, but he didn't seem to want to be cheered up.
After the two weeks of leave, Mark was due back at Fort Hood. He
didn't know what his company's future held for certain, but the way
things were going in the Middle East he knew he'd be redeployed to
Iraq or Afghanistan. The night before he was due back at his base,
Mark pulled his uniform out of the closet, laid it on the ironing
board, and turned the iron on to press it. He began to cry. Sarah
heard the sobbing and found Mark bent over the ironing board, tears
dripping onto his uniform.
"What's wrong?" she said.
For the first time, he really told her about Iraq. He told her about
the soldiers who'd thrown rocks at Iraqi children and handed water
bottles filled with piss to them; about the rocket attack, and how
afterward he'd wondered: "What the hell are we doing here?"; about
the nonexistent WMDs; about the fact that, on the ground, no one
really knew who the enemy was, or why they hated the Americans.
And he told her about the raids. Once, his own home had been invaded,
and Mark, not wanting to be part of the horror, not asking to be the
hero, had acted. He had responded to the immediate threat and had
taken preventive action at the same time. Now, in Iraq, things were
the opposite. Mark was on the other side. America had become the
aggressor, raiding homes, breaking up families, and guilt or
innocence was merely an afterthought. Mark didn't want any part of
it. He told Sarah that he couldn't put on his uniform, that he
wouldn't stand for what it represented, and that he couldn't go back.
"Well," she said. "Let's find a way to get you out."
Mark Wilkerson never wanted to desert his unit. After he and Sarah
decided that he couldn't go back to Iraq, Mark had returned to duty
at Fort Hood. By the end of the week, he had told two of his staff
sergeants that he wanted out, that he couldn't support the war or the
Army anymore. They told him he could apply to become a conscientious
objector, and if his application was accepted he would be discharged.
Mark hadn't considered applying to be a C.O., but it seemed like a
good option. He had already rejected another possibility: a medical
discharge. He was constantly anxious and upset about the war, but
he'd convinced himself he didn't have posttraumatic stress disorder.
On top of that, Mark had seen how the Army treated troops with PTSD.
One soldier in his unit was called a coward and a faker after he
talked about the dreams he'd been having. He was put on suicide
watch; his superiors took away his shoelaces. He became an outcast.
Mark didn't want that treatment. Better to go out on his principles,
he thought, than on a weak mind.
What Mark didn't know, and what his superiors didn't tell him, was
that the military doesn't like to lose trained troops to changes of
heart, and that becoming a conscientious objector is not simply a
matter of filling out a few forms and reentering civilian life. To
become a C.O., an individual must be "conscientiously opposed to
participation in war in any form; whose opposition is found on
religious training and belief; and whose position is sincere and
deeply held," according to Department of Defense protocol. Since
2002, more than 400 members of the armed forces have applied to
become conscientious objectors. Fewer than half have been granted
C.O. status and discharged.
In July 2004, Mark sat down at his computer and, without any advice
or counsel, typed out the C.O. application. "I believe I can no
longer serve as a soldier in the U.S. Army because of my belief that
this uniform that I wear stands for everything that is wrong with our
country and our constant need to watch over the world as though we
are Gods among the heathen children," he wrote. "By implanting our
soldiers, our government, and our beliefs into their world, we are
only furthering the enemies [sic] resolve to defeat us. We should not
give them that opportunity.... At what point will other Americans
turn around and start questioning our country's morals, beliefs, and
intentions, and start seeing the world through different eyes? I have
and that is why I cannot wear this uniform any longer. I cannot force
America's system of self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and greed onto
other nations who know not. I cannot help replace one corrupt regime,
such as the Baath Party or the Taliban, with anotherus."
After the application was complete, he met with an Army chaplain, who
was to ascertain his morals; an Army psychologist, who was to assess
his mental competency; and an investigating officer, who was to judge
whether the application had merit.
The panel liked and respected Mark. In his evaluation, Fort Hood
psychologist Dr. Michael Adams wrote, "This individual was and is
mentally responsible, able to distinguish right from wrong and adhere
to the right, and has mental capacity to understand and participate
in chapter proceedings." Adams continued, "The soldier is very
intelligent and is struggling with values related to justice, use of
violence, and positive regard for human life. He would defend his
family and would fight in a just war if called upon to do so."
The investigating officer, Captain Jeffrey Nerone, wrote, "SPC
Wilkerson has lived his young life admirably, he has strong moral and
ethical values, he is an intelligent, respectful young man and a good
soldier, more soldiers should try and lead a life such as his."
However, Captain Nerone also wrote: "Clear and convincing evidence
has not been established in the application that he is opposed to all
war." On October 26, 2004, Mark's application was rejected. He would
deploy to Iraq in January with the rest of his unit.
Mark filed a rebuttal on December 6, just over four months after his
initial application. This time, he had Marian Neudel, a Chicago
lawyer with military experience, help him draft his response. Mark
argued three points: A just war is impossible in the world we live in
today; defending one's family is not war; and the psychologist
shouldn't have asked his opinion about a just war in the first
placethe psychologist's job was to simply determine his mental
fitness, not his values. When he handed the rebuttal in, he was told
that he had to ship out to Iraq with the rest of his unit, on January
3. The Army would process his appeal while he was gone.
Since September 11, 2001, more than 22,000 troops have been declared
AWOL, according to the Pentagon. This represents less than one
percent of all active-duty soldierswell below the five percent of
AWOL troops during the Vietnam War. (Today's military is an
all-volunteer force, however, compared with the conscription force of
the Vietnam years.) In August 2006, Colorado made national news when
Marine Lance Hering of Boulder staged his own disappearance. While a
friend reported that Hering had been injured while rock climbing in
Eldorado Canyon State Park, he hopped a Greyhound bus in Denverand
disappeared. The resulting search, the largest ever in Boulder
County, was called off when the friend admitted that he had lied.
Hering remains AWOL.
For every Lance Hering, though, there are scores of men and women who
slip away from their units quietly and don't return. Many of them
will stay gone; the military, busy trying to recruit for its
all-volunteer force, doesn't have the time or resources to hunt down
deserters. Some flee to Canada, some cross the border, quietly, into
Mexico. Others, like Mark Wilkerson, return to their hometowns, live
with family and friends, take jobs under the table, and rely on the
goodwill of others.
After checking into the Colorado Springs Days Inn, Mark and Sarah
lived in constant fear. Mark knew that, even if the Feds weren't
hunting him down, there would be a felony warrant for his arrest, so
he and Sarah spent days at a time holed up in the shabby,
claustrophobic room, lying on the bed playing video games and
watching movies. Every time a cell phone chirped, they wondered: Was
it Mark's supervising officer? Or was it just a friend? Every time
there was a rap at the door, Mark and Sarah would jump. Was it
housekeeping? Or was it the Army or the police?
Within a month, Mark and Sarah moved into the back bedroom of a
friend's house in an attempt to live more normally. Sarah started
working at a medical billing company, making $9 an hour, helping
patients get their treatments covered by insurance. A couple months
later, they signed a leasein their own nameson a two-bedroom
apartment only a few miles from their former hideout at the Days Inn.
Mark's name didn't come up during the background check, and he began
to wonder if there was, in fact, a warrant for his arrest.
Emboldened, he took a low-level, low-paying job making cotton swabs
at a factory.
Even with the new job, the anchor in Mark's life became the weekly
veterans' meeting he attended. There, others understood the stress he
had been under, the fear, the haunting dreams of violence. Soldiers
complained about their inability to concentrate, about how they
flinched whenever a car backfired, and about their constant
agitationall problems Mark had suffered. Many of the vets were
disillusioned with, or opposed to, the war, but Mark was still
cautious about telling them that he was AWOL. He didn't want to be
called a coward.
One of the group members, a former Army Reservist named Kelly
Dougherty, became friendly with Mark. Dougherty had founded Iraq
Veterans Against the War in 2004 at a Boston peace conference, and
shortly thereafter, Mark, Dougherty, and another young vet founded
the Colorado Springs chapter of IVAW. Mark began to attend regular
strategy meetings and peace rallies. He read liberal writers like
Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. He started to question everything he
believed innot just the war, but also his conservative political views.
But as Mark and Sarah's lives achieved a level of normality they
hadn't experienced in years, their relationship was dying. Mark had a
job and a degree of freedom, but he was hamstrung by his AWOL status.
He couldn't go to college. He couldn't buy a house. He couldn't get a
serious, well-respected, well-paying job. As he saw it, he didn't
have much of a future. And he was angry. He hated the Army and was
disillusioned with the United States' misadventure in Iraq. He'd
always thought his country was a force for good in the world. Now he
wasn't so sure.
For the first time in their short marriage, Mark began to wonder if
he really loved Sarah. He felt inadequate. She had been there for him
through all of this, and was now making the money they lived on. They
didn't fight, but they drifted apart, living silently next to one another.
Sarah, meanwhile, began doing research on posttraumatic stress
disorder. She knew Mark had dreams, dreams in which he was always in
the turret, always under fire. In one dream, Mark killed an Iraqi,
only to be hoisted on the shoulders of his fellow soldiers. You're
one of us now, they said. A killer.
He was easily agitated and moody, unable to focus and impulsiveall
symptoms of PTSD. Sarah suspected that Mark was having flashbacks,
both to his tour in Iraq and to the murder he'd witnessed as a child.
Mark would have none of it. The Army was the problem. Sarah was the
problem. One weekend in June 2006, when Sarah went to Breckenridge
with some of her friends, Mark decided he'd had enough. He packed up
his belongings and moved home with his mother and her husband, Frank.
Sarah was devastated, but she stayed in contact with Mark, even going
as far as having him cosign the lease for her new apartment. Instead
of her husband, though, Sarah's sister, Lacy, moved in as her roommate.
About a week after she'd moved, Lacy lost the key to the new
apartment. In a panic, Lacy and her boyfriend had tried to break into
the apartment, but, being new to the complex, they accidentally tried
to get in through a window to a unit that wasn't theirs. Someone had
called the police. When they arrived, they found Mark's name on the
lease, and, checking their computers, they found that there was a
warrant for his arrest.
Tired of hiding in plain sight, tired of looking over his shoulder,
Mark finally decided to surrender. He called Michael Duncan, a
Colorado Springs lawyer that fellow IVAW members had recommended, who
advised him to pick a specific day and to alert the Army so that
they'd be expecting him. In late August, Mark took a bus down to
Austin, Texas, where he met up with some friends. Four days later,
they piled in a car and drove to Camp Casey, activist Cindy Sheehan's
antiwar camp in Crawford, Texas. There, clean-shaven and wearing a
pressed, blue dress shirt, Mark spoke at a news conference and told
his story publicly for the first time. He told the crowd of several
hundred, "I am not willing to kill or be killedor do anything else I
consider morally wrongfor reasons I don't believe in. So I made the
difficult decision to go AWOL, for political, spiritual, and personal reasons."
The next day, August 31, 2006, he drove 40 miles to Fort Hood, Texas.
Accompanied by his lawyer, his friends, and IVAW members, he
surrendered at the gates. Mark was greeted by three members of the
command, led inside, and, rather anticlimatically, assigned a bunk in
a barracks. He had been AWOL for nearly 20 months.
While at Fort Hood, Mark received a letter from his grandmother, with
a copy of a letter that her father had written after his son was
killed while quelling an uprising in Nicaragua. It was an open letter
to President Calvin Coolidgepublished in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
and read before Congressthat attacks Coolidge for involving the
United States in a war of aggression. It reads, in part:
"My son was 29 years old, served 3 years of his third enlistment,
survived honorable service through the world war against Germany,
only to be officially murdered in a disgraceful war against this
little nation.... I have four sons and if necessity arose I would be
willing to sacrifice not only all four sons but my own life as well
in a war of defense, but I'm not willing to shed one drop of blood in
a war of aggression, such as this one is."
Mark cried when he read the letter, and posted it on his new blog,
with this response: "This letter that my great-grandfather wrote
showed me that there are many people in the world and our nation
today who forget about the lessons learned from past generations'
experiences.... Nicaragua is Iraq. Every war is different. Every war
is the same."
Six months later, on February 22, 2007, the Army court-martialed
Mark. He pled guilty to the charges of desertion and to missing
movement by design in exchange for a sentence of less than 10 months.
The court-martial, which lasted a full day in a small military
courtroom at Fort Hood, featured six witnesses called by Mark's
lawyer to vouch for his character. His sergeants testified to his
hard work and dedication. Sarah appeared, as did his mother and
Mark's younger brother, Christopher, then a specialist in Army
intelligence, who had driven from Fort Polk in Louisiana. They
confirmed Mark's storythe childhood trauma, his desire to join the
Army, the effect Iraq had on him, and his readiness to move on.
Sarah, crying, testified, "I just want my husband to be happy. He
only needs very simple things to be happy, and I want him to have a
career in which he can truly express himself and his beliefsnot to
have to do something he disagrees with."
The judge sentenced Mark to seven months in military prison and a
bad-conduct discharge. Mark would forfeit his veteran's benefits, but
once he had served his sentence, he would finally be free.
On a scorching September day this year, in a small conference room in
the St. Louis Holiday Inn Select, a couple of dozen vets are gathered
at the Veterans for Peace convention. The group defers to the few
white-haired septuagenarians, veterans of the Second World War or
Korea, who sit at the seats around the conference table. The Vietnam
set stands behind them and fills the roompaunchy, stereotypically
shaggy, but angry and reinvigorated by a new war to fight against. In
contrast, the young Iraq vets are scrupulously clean-cut, with barely
a goatee among them. They are still fit from recent discharges, and
nearly all wear black shirts printed with "Iraq Veterans Against the
War" or "Support GI Resistance." If it weren't for their hardened
eyes, they'd look like graduate students. Only three weeks out of
prison, Mark Wilkerson is the youngest in the group and stands out
among the Iraq vets in his red flannel shirt and cargo shorts.
Prison had proven to be a time of rehabilitation for Mark. He spent
most of his days working in the kitchen, cleaning and prepping the
cafeteria for his fellow inmatessome who had also gone AWOL, others
who had been charged with drug violationsand had plenty of time to
think. He was relieved that his time in the Army was coming to a
close, but he also realized that he finally had to deal with the PTSD
he had ignored for so long. He attended counseling sessions, which
helped, but he also learned that he might suffer symptomsflashbacks,
irritability, and detachmentfor years to come. He found the best
therapy was education. Mark read voraciouslysomething he hadn't done
since high schooland took two courses in U.S. history for college
credit. With help from Sarah, he also applied to Pikes Peak Community
College with the plan of starting school after he'd served his sentence.
Mark also had to deal with his marriage, which he'd treated too
cavalierly over the past stressful years. He had nearly ended the
relationship while awaiting his court-martial, but in prison had
realized his mistake. Sarah had written him letters every day and
sent him phone cards for weekly conversations. She's still trying, he
realized. She was the strong one. She had stood by him. She cared for
him. She knew the old Mark: the conservative, naive, happy-go-lucky
kid. And she knew the new Mark: the more cynical, but enlightened,
peace activist. And so, he set to fixing the relationship that he had
upended, returning the letters and eating up the phone card minutes.
Prison, it turned out, was just the thing the Wilkerson marriage needed.
Now, after the personal hell of the last few years, Mark is finally
ready to tell his story to the assembled vets. "I feel rejuvenated
coming here," Mark says. "And I want to do the same thing that all of
you here want to dokeep this number from getting any higher," he
says, pointing at the black number, 3,781, written on duct tape on
his shoulder. It is the number of American soldiers who'd been killed
in Iraq at that date. Mark talks about enlisting as an optimistic
teenager, his experience on the ground in Iraq, and his eventual
disillusionment with the war. And he tells the group about going
AWOL, about deserting the brothers in his unit. To the assembled
vets, Mark's actions have made him a hero. But Mark is less certain.
"I don't know where that line is between courage and cowardice," he
says, adding: "Peace cannot be won with the barrel of a gun. This war
won't stop until more soldiers stand up and say, 'I'm not going to go.'"
Two weeks later, back home in Colorado Springs, Mark waits for Sarah
to get ready. The two have planned to watch a preseason Broncos game
at a friend's house. Their one-bedroom apartment is small and shows
Sarah's feminine touch: The tiny kitchen, home to what appears to be
the world's smallest full-sized stove, is bright, decorated with
framed words like "Hope" and "Love," and lit by a quirky, many-bulbed lamp.
Mark, dressed and ready to go, still operates on a military schedule.
He wakes at 6 a.m. to go running, and likes to have his days full.
When he got out of prison on July 13 (his sentence was shortened by
two months because of extra hours he'd done in the kitchen and
because his commander at Fort Hood had knocked a month off the
judge's sentence), Mark had planned to take a couple of weeks off and
relax before college started. Within three days, though, he was
bored, and started working at a vegetable stand on a main road in the Springs.
"Honey, we gotta get going soon," he yells to Sarah, who's getting
ready in the bedroom. There isn't any agitation in his voice, just a
hint of teasing, the eye-rolling of a husband used to waiting on his wife.
Even waiting, though, he's content. He doesn't regret his time in the
militaryit made him grow up, and quickbut now he's relieved to be
out. He has what he has always wanted: solace, stability, a return to
normality, and, most important, peaceat least in his own life. He
and Sarah, three years into their marriage, are starting fresh. Mark
calls it their second honeymoon. "We're really just getting to know
each other now," he says. They're both in school at Pikes Peak
Community College. Mark is pursuing a journalism degree, while Sarah
is finally working toward her goal of becoming an elementary school teacher.
And they continue to work for the peace movement. Tonight, in fact,
they are watching the game with two other IVAW members. Mark bitterly
hates the war, and through his work with the IVAW is doing his part
to end the conflict. Unlike many of the impassioned peace-activist
vets, though, he holds nuanced views on military intervention. His
earlier belief that there are no just wars has evolved, and now he
hesitantly admits that certain circumstances might warrant military
action. "It's a very hard line to draw," he says. "I'm opposed to the
war in Iraq, but what about the situation in Darfur? Or what about
the situation in Kosovo in the '90s? I'm just really concerned about
the imperialism we seem to have, and this feeling that we have to
stop every dictator in the world, and change every person's mindset
in these other countries."
Mark is aware that he is a contrarian among vets who have served in
Iraq, among the majority of people in his hometown of Colorado
Springs, and even among his family. His younger brother, Christopher,
now a husband and a father, was recently promoted to sergeant and is
going to airborne school. Christopher reminds Mark of how he once
was: conservative, militaristic, and idealistic about American
intervention abroad.
"His experience has been different than mine," Mark says. He pauses.
"And from what he's seen, the war in Iraq is a good thing. But he
hasn't been there. And I hope he doesn't go. I'd rather him disagree
with me, and be a little naive about what's going on there, than form
his own opinion by going and coming back, and being miserable.
Because then, he'll have seen the truth. And his world will have been
ripped apart, like mine."
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Patrick Doyle is an associate editor at 5280. E-mail him at letters@5280.com..
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