Deserted in 1968 - now in jail

[IanHarrop 43]

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060313/vietnam_deserter_060313/20060313?hub=TopStories

B.C. war deserter held at U.S. military prison
Updated Mon. Mar. 13 2006 12:34 PM ET

The daughter of a Vietnam War deserter living in B.C. says there is still no word from officials on how her father is doing after his arrest in the U.S. last week.

Jessica Abney said she contacted both American and Canadian authorities about her father Allen Abney, a 56-year old grandfather residing in Kingsgate, B.C. "And they were not of any help to us," she said Monday in an interview with CTV Newsnet.

Frustrated that her father has not been allowed to make phone calls, Abney said she and her mother Adrienne contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Consulate General of Canada seeking any help they could provide.

"First, they said they were opening a file, and then the second and third time, my mom phoned and they were not able to give us any information due to privacy concerns."

Allen Abney was crossing the U.S. border into Idaho with his wife Adrienne on Thursday last week. They were on their way to Reno, Nev. for a holiday when the border guard asked the two to come inside.

"We waited twenty minutes and then they took him away. They said that he'd been arrested on an outstanding military warrant for deserting the U.S. Marines in 1968," Adrienne told CTV Vancouver on Sunday.

Since Allen's arrest, his wife of 35 years has not been allowed to contact him.

"We've always been each other's best friends and being apart from him and not being able to talk to him is just devastating to me. I just need to talk to him soon," Adrienne said.

In the meantime, Allen's brother died on Saturday. His family fears that Allen, being held about 1,900 kilometres from home at a military base in San Diego, will not be released in time to attend the funeral.

Allen Abney, who was born in the U.S. but raised in Canada, joined the Marine Corps in 1968 at the age of 19. After going through basic training in North Carolina, Allen fled to Canada before he could be sent to Vietnam.

Tens of thousands of young Americans did the same thing. Many of them also moved to the southern B.C. interior.

Allen became a Canadian citizen in 1977, the same year that President Jimmy Carter offered a pardon to deserters if they applied, and has travelled through the U.S. many times since his desertion without problems.

Adrienne suspects the U.S. government is trying to make an example of her husband.

"It looks to me like they're trying to send a message to any young men that are thinking of not serving their country in Iraq," she said.

"They really want to say, 'hey, you signed up, you're going to fulfill it or you're going to jail'," said Jessica Abney, Allen's daughter.

"They're trying to set an example for some of these new recruits, these young soldiers that are there," added Jessica. "You cannot desert the military or you will be punished."

She added that her father's desertion has always been a "touchy subject."

"I knew that it was something he thought a lot about and it was very difficult for him, so I don't fault him at all. He thought he was making the right decision, and I mean when you're 18-years-old, you do what you can with what you have. "

Charges of desertion have a sliding scale of penalties. The results range from an "other-than-honourable discharge" to a maximum penalty of five years in jail.

"I really cannot conceive that that's a possibility. I really want to stress that," Lynn Gonzales said, who works with the San Diego Military Counselling Project.

The family has been in contact with Foreign Affairs and the Canadian consulate, but has received little help.

In the meantime, all his family can do is wait for news at their home in Kingsgate, just south of Cranbrook in southeast B.C..

"I know he knows I love him, I just wish I'd gotten to tell him that before he left," said Jessica, a tear trickling down her cheek.
---
With a report by CTV Vancouver's Shelly Moore

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[rasmack 0]

Isn't there a statute of limitations on these things?

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[namgrunt 0]

sucks to be a deserter

sucks to be him

all those that did NOT run and many that did NOT RETURN a BIG THANKYOU

to the yellow deserters

go to hell

and never return ..even to RENO just for a vacation

..

59 YEARS,OVERWEIGHT,BALDIND,X-GRUNT
LAST MIL. JUMP VIET-NAM(QUAN-TRI)
www.dzmemories.com

[nathaniel 0]

Wasn't there a presidential pardon that covered all of this? Or did that only cover draft dodgers and not deserters...

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[warpedskydiver 0]

Deserters can still be shot

THEY ARE NOT DRAFT DODGERS

[JohnRich 4]

Quote

Allen Abney was crossing the U.S. border into Idaho with his wife Adrienne on Thursday last week. They were on their way to Reno, Nev. for a holiday when the border guard asked the two to come inside.

"We waited twenty minutes and then they took him away. They said that he'd been arrested on an outstanding military warrant for deserting the U.S. Marines in 1968"...

He made his decision in 1968, and knew full well that after deserting and fleeing the country, he could never return to America.

Serves him right.

[rehmwa 2]

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Serves him right.

I don't know if it 'serves him right' or even what that means. But if he deserted, then the law is upheld in this case. He knew he should have stayed in Canada.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[matthewcline 0]

I was a little young then but if I recall correctly.

President Jimmy Carter gavea free pass to all DRAFT DODGERS. He did not such thing for Deserters.

The difference of course is the Dodgers never registered and the Deserters left after reporting and being in uniform.

A tip of the ice cold beer to you Namgrunt. It is an Honor, my Honor.

An Instructors first concern is student safety.
So, start being safe, first!!!

[JohnRich 4]

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Quote

Serves him right.

I don't know if it 'serves him right' or even what that means.

That means that he is receiving what he justly deserves.

[ROK 0]

No sympathy.

Rot in prison.

[rehmwa 2]

Quote

Quote

Quote

Serves him right.

I don't know if it 'serves him right' or even what that means.

That means that he is receiving what he justly deserves.

oh, then we agree. The law is being followed, he knew the law existed as it's no big secret and 'you takes your chances'

If he's conflicted about his desertion, maybe serving a punishment of some kind can close the book for him personally as well.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[IanHarrop 43]

Related story....

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-07-deserter-side_x.htm

Decades later, Marines hunt Vietnam-era deserters
By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — In the summer of 1965, Marine Cpl. Jerry Texiero quietly disappeared from his California base, plagued by personal demons and a mounting opposition to the Vietnam War.
Forty years later, in the summer of 2005, Texiero — now known as Gerome Conti — was taken into custody by police in Tarpon Springs, Fla., after the Marine Corps tracked him down.

Thirty years after the war ended, hundreds of Vietnam-era deserters are still on the loose. Conti's attorneys, Louis Font and Tod Ensign, say the Pentagon, and the Marine Corps in particular, are cracking down on long-term cases in an effort to warn current-day troops in Iraq against deserting.

"My view is that the Marines are trying to send a message to people in the ranks today that they, too, will be required to participate in a war, whether they think it's illegal or immoral," Font says. (Related story: 8,000 desert during Iraq war)

Marine spokesman Capt. Jay Delarosa says there was nothing unusual about the treatment of Conti.

However, the Marine official in charge of bringing in deserters said after Conti's arrest that his office was being more aggressive.

Chief Warrant Officer James Averhart, who has commanded the Marine Corps Absentee Collection Center since September 2004, told the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times that he had ordered cold cases reopened and that his squad had caught 27 deserters in his first 11 months on the job, a rate he suggested was higher than those of his predecessors. The Corps last month updated that number to 33 cases.

"I have a different leadership style than the guys who have had this job. My job is to catch deserters. And that's what I do," Averhart told the newspaper.

Delarosa said Averhart would not answer questions from USA TODAY. Asked whether the Marine Corps stands by Averhart's comments, Delarosa said, "I wasn't involved in that particular interview with CWO Averhart." He added that the Marine Corps has "discouraged most requests for interviews because CWO Averhart has been frequently misquoted."

Will Van Sant, who wrote the Times article, says the Marines never contacted him after it appeared.

Conti, 65, says he was surprised. "I thought they couldn't possibly be looking for me anymore. I would think they would have stopped looking for anybody who had been gone as long as I had."

Conti was held for five months — four in solitary confinement — then given an other-than-honorable discharge in January. If he had been court-martialed and convicted, he could have faced three years in the brig and a dishonorable discharge.


Left: U.S. Marine Corps; Right: Ft. Worth Star-Telegram via AP
The photo on the left shows Ernest Johnson Jr. as he looked in 1969. On the right is the same man, now going by the name Ernest "Buck" McQueen.


Another long-term Marine deserter, Ernest "Buck" McQueen, was arrested in Fort Worth in January. McQueen was Ernest Johnson Jr. when he left Camp Lejeune, N.C., in November 1969 because of concerns about going to Vietnam. McQueen, 55, also was discharged without disciplinary action.

McQueen says he didn't take a new name to hide. His Social Security card says "McQueen." He says he was born Ernest Johnson Jr., but when his biological father left, his mother raised her son by her married name, McQueen. When he joined the Marines, he says, they insisted he go by Ernest Johnson Jr.

The government drafted men for the armed forces during wartime from the Civil War until 1973. Conti and McQueen enlisted.

In 1974, President Ford offered clemency to Vietnam draft resisters and deserters. Only 27,000 of 350,000 eligible applied. The offer expired on April 1, 1975. In 1977, President Carter pardoned those who dodged the war by not registering or fleeing the country. Neither Conti nor McQueen applied for the Ford pardon. Both spent decades hiding their past from families and employers. McQueen kept his military experience from two wives and two children, and even Conti's best friend in Florida, Elaine Smith, knew nothing of his history with the Marines.

McQueen says he had been in the Marines for nearly two years when he learned of the My Lai massacre in 1968, when hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers. "I saw photos of guys with ears on their chains. I lost my desire to be a part of it."

Conti says his decision to desert was a combination of lingering emotional scars from a childhood lived in foster homes and concerns about stories he also was hearing about Vietnam.

Special Agent Tom Lorang of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) says most older desertion cases are filed away after an initial investigation is completed, although some are re-examined.

Except for the Marine Corps, military officials say long-term cases normally are closed when deserters voluntarily come back in or are stopped by civilian law officials, not through efforts to track them down.

That's not Conti's or McQueen's story. Conti says he was told his file was reopened and his fingerprints were run through a national database. He was in the database because he had been convicted of fraud and theft in 1998. He was on probation and paying restitution when the Marines caught up with him.

McQueen, a carpenter, says his former brother-in-law was called by Marine investigators, and he told them where to find him. "This kind of ... put me in a financial bind," says McQueen, who had been doing carpentry for a church when he was seized.

Conti has returned to his job selling boats, which his employer kept open for him while he was locked up.

"They just need to declare amnesty for everybody from a certain time back or from certain conflicts," says Elaine Smith, Conti's friend. "These guys ... just had issues, as we all did back in the '60s."

Military officials maintain that those who deserted the service are liable under law, no matter how unpopular a war was. "We actively investigate all cases of desertion," says Fred Hall, a spokesman for the Naval Personnel Command. "For each of the active deserters we have on our rolls — 1,190 as of 31 Jan. '06 — there is a federal warrant out for their arrest."

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[IanHarrop 43]

Update to original post

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-14-marines_x.htm

Vietnam-era deserter likely will be freed, Marines say
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) — A man who deserted the U.S. Marine Corps in 1968 likely will be freed within a week without a court-martial, the Marine Corps said.
Unless more information surfaces, Allen Abney's case will be handled administratively, Lt. Lawton King, a Marine Corps spokesman, said Monday.

Abney, 56, was arrested Thursday when he and his wife tried to cross into the United States from their home in Kingsgate, British Columbia. He was being held in the Camp Pendleton brig. (Related story: Marines still hunt Vietnam-era deserters)

His daughter, Jessica Abney, said he had crossed into the United States hundreds of times without incident. But officials said a routine computer check this time revealed an arrest warrant.

On Monday, Allen Abney met with a military lawyer, a colonel and a representative of the Canadian Consulate. He also spoke to medical personnel.

Abney was born in the United States but grew up in Canada. He retained his American citizenship and enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1968, soon after his younger brother received a draft notice.

Abney was sent to boot camp at Camp Pendleton but fled to Vancouver after receiving a weekend pass to visit Mexico.

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[rickjump1 0]

Quote

sucks to be a deserter

sucks to be him

all those that did NOT run and many that did NOT RETURN a BIG THANKYOU

to the yellow deserters

go to hell

and never return ..even to RENO just for a vacation

..

A big fucking A. I agree.

Do your part for global warming: ban beans and hold all popcorn farts.

[Andrewwhyte 1]

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Frustrated that her father has not been allowed to make phone calls, Abney said she and her mother Adrienne contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Consulate General of Canada seeking any help they could provide.

I kinda feel bad for the guy after all these years but the Canadian government has no business prying into the affairs of an American in America. The fact that he may also have Canadian citizenship is irrelevent, if he wanted sanctuary from his old government he should not have returned. I have heard of people getting into trouble returning to see their dying mother, but a vacation in Reno, gimme a break.