Marine boyfriend of my wife’s sister deserts from LeJeune. He comes to my sister-in-law’s place, tells her a cockamamie story about extended leave, and attempts to have legal papers filed somehow changing his name. (I swear I am not making this up.) The relationship deepens, and wedding plans are made. Mother-in-law, God bless her, doesn’t believe a syllable of it and calls the Corps recruiter she knows and checks it out. Of course the whole thing is bogus, the Corps comes and gets him, and he even does time in the stockade/military prison. “End of life as he knows it” was what mother-in-law was told by the recruiter. “He basically will have no future at all.”
At this point - my evidently naive presumption was that the service would treat him like, well, a deserter. I thought he would get a dishonorable discharge, thus ending any hope of what might pass as a normal life-- and by extension the relationship with my sister-in-law.
Wrong.
They’ve been married for 6 months now.
He has a military ID card. I’ve seen it.
I am told he is still pulling a military paycheck. He also has a civilian job.
He is proud of himself as a provider for having sister-in-law covered on CHAMPUS insurance.
He has no shame, remorse, or even reluctance to discuss the military or his situation. He seems rather pleased with himself. He identifies himself as a Marine.
This flies in the face of everything I thought I knew about the military. I thought they did not put up with desertion. How can you still pull a paycheck and not be serving? How can you and your wife be on CHAMPUS? * How can you not feel an exquisite sense of shame for being a marine deserter on 9/11?*
It seems like I don’t know everything about this situation, but I don’t see the circumstances that allow a deserter a military paycheck and benefits while holding a civilian job.
Military deserters, when caught, are tried by a court martial and they get whatever punishment the court hands out. That varies and can be up to death for desertion in the face of the enemy.
Many US soldiers in WWII ran away as whole units in the face of the enemy, its called a rout, but only one individual was executed for it. That’s because he kept running and an example was needed, while most of the rest stopped running, dug in and resumed the battle sooner or later.
Basic rule of questions about military justice: You don’t know the whole story.
I realize that you admit that, but it’s the basic rule, so there you go. There are evidently circumstances you’re unaware of. Possibilities that come to mind:
His unit felt it wasn’t worth the effort to boot him the right way and merely allowed him to end his enlistment. He’s on terminal leave and therefore still drawing pay until that runs out.
He successfully joined the Reserves after getting booted with a better-than-dishonorable discharge.
You didn’t say how long he was gone – if it was less than thirty days, then he wasn’t a deserter. More precisely, if it was less than thirty days after his unit realized he was AWOL and reported it, then he wasn’t a deserter.
As for his ID card, that doesn’t mean much. Transition points are notoriously bad about collecting them, and it’s entirely possible for a service member to have more than one anyway (“I lost mine, so I need a new one.”).
I am not the expert but I think that perhaps this man was charged Absent With Out Leave"AWOL". This is obviously very serious but maybe the Marines have chosen to give him what I believe is called a Field Grade Article 15. This goes into the permanent 205 / 203 ??? Hell, I cant’t remember what the file is called but it is a huge deal and it will follow him forever. Maybe he did time in the stockade and tons of extra duty. In addition, they can impose a huge fine. The military invests so much on training. They would probably impose very harsh penalties but want to keep him in uniform. This kind of thing would have severe consequences pertaining to getting promotions and future positions.
If you are in the military and you commit a crime, I think UCMJ has jurisdiction. So, maybe this is why the false ID deal was not handled in a civilian court.
I do not present this info as fact. It is a mixture of memory and theory. (WAG)
I apologize, I did not read the OP carefully. I missed the part about how he does not serve yet gets a check. HMMM… could it be…back pay? Or as someone else suggested…Reserve weekend stuff? Maybe…“Black Ops”. Are you sure he has a civilian job? I do not know how he could be getting paid and not serving. But, when they catch it, they can and will, take it all back. Don’t know what could be going on here but there must be information we don’t know about.
I know nothing about the rules, and this was thirteen years ago, but my ex-husband was AWOL for over three months. We had separated and I came home and he pretty much stalked me for the next three months.
He was sent to a psychiatrist and treated for depression. That was all!
I believe he was given a GENERAL discharge about a year later after being charged with statutory rape by the parents of a 14 year old girl.
Great guy, he was.
Yep, this needs more details, specially on the bit about continuing to draw a DoD paycheck and having CHAMPUS for his dependents.
I’ll go for the first of stankow’s scenarii + jacksen9’s : his little adventure has been classed AWOL rather than desertion. At any given time in all of the services there’s people going AWOL for weeks on end and doing all sorts of unkosher things while at it.
When charging someone in the military with an offense, what counts is what it says in the UCMJ, not how it looks to us civs – either the the crime of “desertion”as specifically defined in the UCMJ was not there, or the parties involved did not feel like putting him, JAG, and the Corps through the whole rigmarole. After all, “desertion” is one of the worst offenses under UCMJ; you don’t just accuse drunk drivers of First-Degree Murder.
The person who said “his life is over” was being dramatic: really meant any military/government career is seriously compromised and that things could get really ugly if he did not cooperate. The Marine in question was surely given the choice of accept a summary procedure and a predetermined punishment the Corps could live with, or request a Court Martial and risk having the book thrown at him.
I’m wondering about the “paycheck” – I’d expect that the Corps would rather keep him during that time, getting some work out of their investment in training, rather than having him out on the street…unless …
… unless he was deemed after evaluation to have, er, become mentally unfit, so he’s actually drawing disability pay. Which would be another question.
I just thought that I’d add that the term AWOL (Away Without Leave) is not used in the USN/USMC. The correct term is UA (Unauthorized Absence).
Also, if an individual shows a clear intent to never return to their unit, desertion can be declared immediately, with no 30-day period of absence necessary. Whether or not this will be done is up to the unit’s commanding officer, however.
Feel free to run over to http://www.bupers.navy.mil and check the link for the MILPERSMAN (it’s in PDF) to check the following I’m going to say.
If someone runs away from his military duties, barring what I’ll discuss below, it’s usually Unauthorized Absence (UA), which is divided into a) Absent Over Leave or Liberty (means you had time off and you didn’t return), b) Absent Without Leave or Liberty (means you just up and left–no time off involved), or c) Desertion (discussed in 2)).
Desertion is usually granted as a change in status to an individual once that individual’s been UA for 30 days. The exceptions to this are a) Manifested Intent to Desert (“Screw it. I’m leaving and not coming back!”), or b) Entered UA status while awaiting either judicial (court-martial) or non-judicial (Captain’s Mast/Article 15) proceedings.
Once an individual is gone, IIRC, one year, then that individual can be administratively discharged. Since a Dishonorable Discharge may only be awarded by a court-martial, the type of discharge the “adsepee” receives is Other Than Honorable (“OTH”). Again, IIRC, the lowest level of court-martial cannot award a Dishonorable Discharge.
Many things are taken into consideration during a court-martial, just like in a civilian trial. One other thing though, is that the commanding officer may have decided to offer the individual concerned the Summary Court-Martial instead of the full-blown one. Turning down that one isn’t so bright if you’re guilty.
It’s illegal to have a “pre-determined punishment” for any judicial or non-judicial proceeding. The UCMJ has what’s known as maximum punishments which differ depending on rank/rate of accused, rank/rate of officer trying the case, and type of proceeding involved.
Lastly, one Sailor on my first ship, the outstanding USS CARL VINSON (CVN 70), also got married while he was in a UA status. During his time in the brig awaiting his Summary Court, I assisted him with all the paperwork to get his wife an ID card, Tri-Care, and to start his BAQ on her behalf.
What specific case are you talking about? If it’s the one I’m thinking of (and I can’t remember the guy’s name), he was arrested for running away from multiple units multiple times and telling people that he’d run away again if they caught him, not just that he ran away from a single fight. ‘Desertion’, AFAIR, involves intending to actually leave the army and not running away in the course of one battle, and isn’t ‘platoon A broke and ran off of the field’ but more like ‘platoon A broke, ran off the field, and has been hiding away from us ever since’.
Riboflavin: Mr Simmons is referring to the case of Pvt. E. Slovick (or Slovik?). His case occurred during the winter of 1944/45, when many US units were forced to retreat in an organized or sometimes disorgnaized fashion. I don’t know all the detials of his case off hand, but he was charged with desertion and was shot.
A movie was made about his case starring (as one might guess) Martin Sheen. He was portrayed as a guy who wasn’t Army material (drafted later in the war despite a petty criminal background) and who wasn’t particularly motivated to fight. According to the movie, he became separated from his unit and sort of elected to stay that way as it was convienent for him. He was eventually found out and (per the film) Eisenhower wanted an example of how stern and serious the Army could get on guys who decided to slack off and avoid the fighting.
Desertion is manifest by a) being UA for longer than 30 days, or b) running away in the face of the enemy, or c) declaring one’s intent to not return, or d) running away when judicial or non-judicial proceedings are pending. Option a is the only one that requires a waiting period before the commanding officer can adjust the individual’s status from merely absent without leave to deserter. Options b, c, and d get one immediately declared a deserter.
So, rjung, AWOL is that big of a deal, and no, Bush wasn’t AWOL for a year.
JCHeckler, the movie had Eddie’s background more or less corrrect, but played a fair bit with his Army record.
Eddie was in fact 4F, but was reclassified later in the war when the service started getting desperate for more warm bodies. Eddie deserted his units repeatedly, but not the army, per se. He was last captured by the MPs while acting as a sort of “platoon servant” for a platoon in an another unit, doing laundry, cooking, scrounging, and in other ways generally being useful. When his case came for review, despite his history of running, he was told that all he had to do is go back to the line, and all would be forgiven. He refused, point-blank. Eddie was a physical coward (although you might make a case for him having moral courage), and was comfortable with his cowardice. He told the Army that if they put him in the line, he would simply run again, and asked to serve in any other capacity, as long as it didn’t involve combat. For this honesty, he was made the sole scapegoat deserter in the US Army in WWII.
And if I were to be honest about a desire to kill you, Tranquilis, would I be made a “scapegoat” and thrown into prison? Private Slovik was told, in a time of war, to pick up a gun and fight. He refused and ran, knowing full well that punishment could entail execution. Scapegoat or not, he got what he had coming.