New Hope Journal
Personal Essays and Public Opinions since 1979
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Confessions of a sort of a Conscientious Objector 1960-1969
Captain Roger Lang, a man about my own age (between 25 and 30) was generally amiable and seemed to be breezing through his military service with no more difficulty than going to graduate school or working a mid-level management position with a large corporation. He read my letter the next morning and immediately called me into his office and closed the door.
“What’s going on here, Private Dill?” he asked, obviously very agitated. Before I could answer him he continued. “What do you want me to do with this letter?”
I said, “I want you to give me a 212 discharge.”
“A 212 discharge? Just like that? A 212 discharge?”
“Yes. I believe that somewhere between my history of conscientious objection and my current state of emotional distress I could qualify for the military definition of Unsuitability.”
“On what grounds??” he fairly squealed in exasperation.
“Well, I guess character and behavior disorder.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your character and behavior…except for this letter! You know I could order you to go back out there and get to work and if you refused I could have you court martialed!”
“I know, Capt. Lang. I’m hoping you won’t do that. But I want out. I should have fought this thing back home. I want to do something now to protest the war and my involvement in it. This letter is a true and accurate expression of my feelings. I have a right to express myself and I intend for now to continue to obey orders. I don’t think I’m doing anything illegal yet. But once the Army finds out how I really feel, I don’t think they’ll want me anymore.”
“This could be very dangerous for you, Larry! I’ll just tell you that as a friend. This letter could be construed as a threat. You know, technically we’re in a war zone here. Somebody up the line might decide to make an example out of you.”
“I know.”
“I’m gonna do a little checking around and see what I can find out about what we can do about this. I suggest you do the best you can to get back to work and I’ll get back to you. Does anybody else know about this? Sergeant Mays? (my immediate supervisor the senior Company Clerk), Sergeant Wilkins? (The Sergeant Major and senior Non-Commissioned officer.)”
“I’ve discussed my ideas with some of my friends, but no one has seen this letter but you. I haven’t said anything to Sergeant Mays or Sergeant Wilkins.”
“Well Sergeant Wilkins is gonna be pretty pissed. You know he’s got you up for top secret clearance so you can take over the office when Mays goes home. That’s all gonna be history now no matter what happens. You’ve opened a can of worms here, Larry.” He stood up and tossed my letter onto his desk as if it were orders to invade North Korea.
“Well, thanks for not putting me in handcuffs right off the bat, sir,” I said saluting him.
“Well, we’ll see what happens,” he said waving me out of his office.
Evidently the “checking around” that Capt. Lang did was to talk to his immediate supervisor, the Battalion Commander, Lieutenant Colonel William Casey because the next day I was called to Battalion Headquarters and ushered into Colonel Casey’s office.
The conversation with Colonel Casey was relatively brief, as I recall, and surprising in its content. He said he had read my letter to Capt. Lang and that he wanted to help me out by offering me the opportunity to finish out my service in the medical corps. With minimal training I could use my clerk skills to keep medical records. He said,
“We get a lot of conscientious objectors in the medical corps and if they see any combat, they have an opportunity to save the lives of men who might otherwise die. I think it is a fine way for a conscientious objector to serve his country.”
I thanked the Colonel for his gesture, but I repeated what I had said when I had gone before my Selective Service board back in San Antonio in 1968. I told the Colonel that I felt that in a combat situation even a medic might be ordered to take up arms and I wanted very much to stand firm in my original beliefs.
He looked at me long and hard for a minute, twisting his jaw a bit and finally said, “Well, I have another idea. I see you have a college degree. What’s that in?”
“English.”
“Right. English. Well, I tell you, I can probably get you transferred down to the library in Seoul. You know there is an American colony down there and on the base some people have there families there and there are schools…even a high school. There’s a hospital down there. Lot of good lookin’ young American women down there. Teachers and nurses and such. Some are in the military. Some civilians. It’s a good library. Think you could do something like that?”
I was shocked by the offer. It caught me off guard. The whole idea sounded really good. Seoul was a major Asian city. Lots of cultural opportunities. Not to mention the library itself and the “good lookin’ young American women.” And on top of that it somehow seemed clear to me that this was gonna be my last chance. If I turned this down, they were gonna start playing hardball with me and as Capt Lang had already warned me, things could go either way at that point.
When I worked as a draft counselor in the spring and summer of ’68, the goal of the American Friends Service Committee was to help people avoid military service, legally of course, but for whatever reasons they wanted to offer. We were not in the business of trying to determine sincerity or motive. From our point of view the war was immoral so anybody who wanted to avoid it was doing the right thing and we wanted to help them.
Now this new thing I was doing was in that same spirit. Try to figure out how to get out of the Army legally. I was testing out the theory of “Catch-212.” If it worked for me, the news would get around. That’s what Colonel Casey was worried about. He didn’t want this thing to get started in his battalion, on his watch. He was trying to nip it in the bud.
Almost trembling, I said, “I appreciate your offers, Colonel, but I’ve already made this sort of compromise when I came in. It turned out to be a mistake that I’m trying now to put right.”
Casey was as handsome as a movie star. He rocked back in his executive chair and shook his head back and forth. “Alright, son. I guess you’ve made up your mind.” He leaned forward and wrote a note and, handing it to me, said, “I want you to go see this chaplain. And you’re gonna have to go down to Division and see the psychiatrist down there. Capt Lang will let you know about all that.” He stood up. “You can go now.” I came to attention and saluted. He gave me a half-hearted salute back and I walked out wondering what my fate would be.
My odyssey had begun with Captain Lang on November 17. I’d seen Colonel Casey the next day and the day after that I underwent a complete physical examination there in the infirmary at Battalion Headquarters. My psychiatric evaluation was scheduled to take place 5 days later on November 24. Somewhere during that 5 days I went to see the chaplain, Colonel Casey had ordered me to see. He was a Catholic Priest.
In Mike Nichol’s film version of “Catch-22,” released the year I got out of the Army, Anthony Perkins of “Psycho” fame plays the chaplain as an ineffectual fool. The chaplain I went to see was a reactionary hawk who was the only person who interviewed me in the chain of command (from Colonel Casey and Capt Lang to the Division Psychiatrist) who actually questioned my sincerity and patriotism. He told me flatly that I was wrong not to want to defend my country and I told him back that the only defense necessary for our country right now was to protest its naked aggression against small defenseless countries like Vietnam. He got so angry I thought he might pick up something and throw it at me. His face grew red, he pounded his hands on his desk and he shouted that people like me should “love America or leave it,” just like the bumper stickers back in the states were saying in those days.
I wanted to tell him that I would have expected a certain amount of empathy at the very least from a man of the cloth but thought better of it and got out of his office as quickly as possible. It was the first time in my life I had ever had a private conversation with a Catholic priest and I wondered what it would have been like if I had been Catholic and had expressed my anti-war views in a confessional with this man on the other side of the screen.
Division and Brigade Headquarters were located at a much larger Army post 30 miles southwest of my own post—the one commanded by Colonel Casey. Our post was in turn less than 30 miles from North Korea. And though we had, bowling alleys, prostitutes and medieval priests, we had no psychiatrists. So to undergo my psychiatric evaluation I had to ride a military bus (really a school bus painted olive drab) 30 miles down a bumpy, dusty road past the humble and hard working Korean peasants I’ve alluded to earlier.
Of all the people I talked to in my 212 ordeal, the one I have the least memory of was the Division Psychiatrist, Captain Henry Schmidt. You can apply your own Freudian interpretation to that. It was Schmidt’s evaluation of my mental condition that would be the key to my getting out of the Army or undergoing some other bizarre fate. After the good cop/ bad cop routine with Colonel Casey, the good cop offering me books, babes and big city lights if I would roll over, to the bad cop, Father what’s-his-name, threatening to slap me for cowardice as George C. Scott had done in Patton, I fully expected Captain Schmidt to quote chapter and verse not from the DSM or Sigmund Freud, but from Doc Daneeka in “Catch-22.”
As I said, I can only vaguely remember being interviewed and have no memory at all of the physical features of Dr. Schmidt or of the conversation we had. I did however, eventually receive as a part of my separation papers a copy of the “Certificate” containing Schmidts “findings” and his recommendation that I be discharged. I present that certificate here in its entirety. As you can see, the Certificate is clear in its recommendation but from the standpoint of logic it makes no more sense than the convoluted logic of “Catch-22.” The problem of course goes directly back to the Army’s role in the original design of the DSM and to the ongoing contemporary debate about the DSM’s legitimacy. Here’s the “Certificate” that sealed my fate.
Department of the Army
Mental Hygiene Consultation Service
XX Medical Battalion
XX Infantry Division
APO San Francisco 96207
24 November 1969
C E R T I F I C A T E
1. This is to certify that I have psychiatrically examined DILL, Larry, E-3, Co X
1XX (M) INF who was referred to this service by his commanding officer for evaluation for administrative separation from the service under the provisions of of AR 635-212.
2. PERTINENT HISTORY: Larry Dill is a 25 year old EM who has been in the service 10 months and in Korea 5 months; his ETS [Estimated Termination of Service] is 5 Feb 1971. This man was denied conscientious objector status before coming into the Army. He described himself as sort of a “hippie” who participated in peace demonstrations and “draft counseling.” He chose to come into the Army and try to make it rather than evade the draft. He has had no Article 15’s [misconduct charges] or court martials.
He now finds that his conscience or integrity will not allow him to continue in the service, an institution which he is firmly opposed to. He also feels that any rehabilitative measures offered by the service would be of no benefit to him. During the interview he was polite, cooperative and sincere.
3. FINDINGS: As a result of the psychiatric examination, it is the opinion of the undersigned that:
a. He is mentally able to distinguish right from wrong and adhere to the right; he is considered mentally responsible for his actions.
b. He has the capacity to understand the nature of administrative and board proceedings, and to testify in his own behalf.
c. This man meets the physical and mental retention standards described in Chapter 3 of AR 40-501.
d. This condition is a character and behavior disorder, and is not amenable to hospitalization, treatment in a military setting, disciplinary action, or reclassification to other forms of duty.
e. His condition is a result of deficiencies in personality development of such severity as to render him unsuitable for military service.
4. SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS: It is the recommendation of this service that this man be separated from the service under the provisions of AR 635-212. He is very sincere in his beliefs and , if retained, he would only cause the Army and himself embarrassment.
Henry Schmidt
Capt MC
Division Psychiatrist
Gerald Andrews
Capt MSC
Division Social Worker
Considering the Army’s general thoroughness, the thoroughness of the physical examination I received and the intensity of Colonel Casey’s efforts to keep me in the Army and make me happy, it is puzzling that the “Certification” of my “deficiencies in personality development of such severity as to render [me] unsuitable for military service,” are not listed or explained. The words seem just to float there independently of everything else in the document. They had to have been put there in that specific language because that was the language required to make my “condition” suitable for an unsuitability discharge. If Capt Schmidt’s Certificate had said, “Private Dill is perfectly sane and healthy, it is just that being in the Army against his will is justifiably causing him a great deal of anxiety,”…if he’d said that it would have been Catch-22 all over again. In order to get around the fictional catch to the real catch—Catch-212—something had to be wrong with me. Since obviously nothing was wrong with me I find it very interesting that Captain Schmidt, concluded that what was wrong with me just so happened to be the very same bullshit suggestion I had made to Captain Lang when he asked on what grounds could I possibly ask for a 212 discharge. Colonel Casey obviously knew the whole enterprise was bullshit or he wouldn’t have graciously offered me the holiday tour in Seoul.
Go on to Chapter 5 Part 3: The Conclusion, "Hey Honey, This Your Plane?
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