"He is with the prophets..."

It is fitting, however, that the objector be bold in the knowledge that he (however unworthy) is with the prophets, and that his inquisitors (however worthy) are speaking for the dead past out of which man is creeping. It is not right that the advocates of love should apologize or flinch.
-Handbook for Conscientious Objectors, Eighth Edition, November, 1965.

He is young, and a bit frightened, and trying hard not to show it. It is as if he cannot get comfortable, cannot bear to look at me, cannot stop his hands from picking up first a sheet of paper, then the ashtray next to him on my desk, then a book.

I ask his name, his address, and where he is stationed, noting his responses as fast as I can. Then I suggest, as I usually do, that he tell me what his problem is.

The words come out in a rush, in that strange mixture of military alphabet soup and street language common to many enlisted people. GITMO, Med Cruise, MARGE, TDY, XO-I can't follow it all, he is speaking so fast and with such assurance in a speech totally foreign to my civilian mind. I have to stop to translate even now, when I have heard this language a hundred times or more.

But his problem is clear: it is the Navy. He has been in a little over a year, and three months ago he decided he couldn't take it any more. So he left. He is back now-he turned himself in two weeks ago-and facing court-martial. He doesn't know when, or what level, or how much he might be punished. At the moment he is waiting.

He has been here before, but it was after office hours, and the one person in the office could only talk with him briefly and give him some literature. The literature makes things easier: he knows how he might get a discharge, and we can quickly eliminate the ones that don't apply.

I ask about his family, his medical problems, his military record, and whether he has any psychological problems. Nothing worth pursuing.

His enlistment was the usual story: he signed up on Delayed Entry while he was in high school, took a summer to go to California, and came when the Navy called. The recruiter promised him trips around the world, good pay, an exciting life, and training in nuclear power if he qualified. He didn't qualify. Now he is a cook.

Did he have a criminal record? I ask. Nothing. He grew up in a rough neighborhood, but he usually kept out of trouble. Once he was in a car where the police found some hashish, but the charges were dropped.

Did he use drugs? Not to speak of-once in awhile he experimented, nothing stronger than hashish. But he didn't tell the recruiter about it.

I am searching, almost desperately, for a way to keep him out of court.

Did he get any promises in writing from the recruiter? Only the usual ones on the enlistment contract.

It is no good. His enlistment was probably legal. His best court defense is unlawful enlistment;1 without it or another defense, his chances of conviction are over ninety percent. I drop it for the moment. Perhaps his records will show something he doesn't remember.

How does he feel about conscientious objection? I ask, feeling a bit awkward. It is always like this, no matter how many times I ask it. Conscientious objection is not just another grounds for discharge. It is a philosophy, a way of life, and the question I am asking is really about who he is and what he cherishes most. I cannot ask it lightly, and I always flounder a bit.2

So does he. He wants to be a conscientious objector, he says, but he isn't sure he qualifies. Where before he had spoken quickly, angrily, and assuredly, he has become quiet and hesitant.

Why not? I ask.

He is not religious, and the regulation requires religious training and belief. He thinks he may not object to all wars, and the regulation requires him to. No one he knows would give him a supporting letter.

He is going on to list more problems with his beliefs. I have been writing furiously, trying to keep up with the flow of his words, but now I abandon my notebook. One can't write and talk-or listen.

I reflect again, as I often have before, what an awesome business conscientious objection is. It would be easy for a clever person to construct a fraudulent claim, but few do. I can recall one that I was sure of, two or three that I suspected. For the rest, they were sincere, and, oddly, would not submit a claim if they were unsure of their own motivation. It makes counseling, often, a very long process, for no one is as sure as some objectors would like to be. But there is something forbidding, almost sacred, about conscientious objection, even to those who have just learned about it.

I wrench myself back to the conversation. What does he mean when he says he is not religious? I ask. What does he believe?

His story is one I have heard perhaps forty, perhaps fifty times, with variations. He was raised in a major church but has grown away from it. He does not criticize the church, though others I have talked with do; it simply began to mean less and less to him as he changed. Now it means little or nothing.

He is still telling me what he does not believe. That is the easy part-it is much harder to state a positive belief-but it is also necessary. He is clearing away underbrush to plant an oak.

He falters and stops, looking at me now as though I can tell him what he needs to say. I am recalling my own struggle to state my beliefs without trivializing them. Telling him what to say would mean telling him what he believes, who he is. His claim, if he makes it, must be his. It would be easier in many ways if he could simply invoke a creed, but he is one who must find his own way.

His religion, I suggest, is whatever set of beliefs-whatever values, whether God or non-God-rules his life most deeply. It has nothing to do with church-going or formal piety. There are church members whose religion is wholly different from their creeds, and there are non-church goers who are deeply religious. The law can see, is allowed to see, no difference. Any strong belief, moral, philosophical, theological, is a religious belief for purposes of the law. The real question is why he feels as he does about war.

He is still bothered by the word. Forget about religion for a moment, I suggest. The law still uses the word, but the courts no longer require it. A moral objection is enough.

A moral objection is what he has. He is speaking more confidently now, of his revulsion to killing, of how when he was younger he went hunting and came back sickened. It is not, for him, a question of philosophy. He has no sophisticated rationale, no scripture quotations, no church doctrine. He simply cannot, literally cannot, kill.

That is enough, I tell him, if it leads him to oppose war. But what did he mean when he said he did not object to all wars. When would he fight?

Suddenly I am struck by his youth. He is eighteen, perhaps nineteen at the outside: an absurd age to carry his burden. He should be living, perhaps reading and studying war and peace at leisure, not struggling with such questions in a life-or-death situation. Philosophers do not resolve them in a lifetime; theologians have argued about them for centuries. Yet, as always, old politicians make wars, young soldiers fight them, and those young who question-who choose life instead of death, who refuse to die or to kill for distant reasons of state-those are the abnormal ones. They are the ones who must prove their case, as if war were self-evidently good and peace evil.

He is going on. He thinks he might fight if the country were attacked, but he is not really sure what he would do. He is perplexed by the war against Hitler. I have heard this, too, before. I have been through it myself. There are no answers, for one cannot be responsible for history or predict the future. There are only gropings toward answers.

Leaving aside the past and future, I ask, how does he feel now? He knows he could not kill, he says; he does not know how he would be in some other situation.

Then he should apply for discharge, I suggest, unless he feels dishonest in doing so. The law does not say he must think out all contingencies, or that he has to be a historian who has analyzed every situation. If he has, well and good; if he has not, neither have many others. He is in the Navy now, and he must hew to his own truth now, even if he does not understand that truth completely himself.

That is bad philosophy, I reflect, but philosophers have time. They can argue endlessly over a point of ethics because they need not decide. They can wait for consistency because they will not die in battle, or kill, or go insane, if they do not achieve it in time.

He asks me, with an almost resigned air, about supporting letters. He will have problems, he repeats, getting any. He knows no one who could provide them. Maybe some friends in his old unit, a priest he knows. His parents? Not likely. His father was in the Navy; his brother did two years in Vietnam with the Marines.

We discuss it. After thinking awhile, he decides he can get four, perhaps five, letters. I am thinking how difficult all this must be for him. It is simple for one raised in an anti-war atmosphere to form an objection to war. The concept is not foreign; it does not mean violating all one's norms. For most people I have seen, however, it is no easy matter to oppose war. At best it means possible conflict with the family. At worst it can mean terrible self-doubt: Am I really a conscientious objector, or am I just afraid of dying? All one's heroes may be military heroes. What other kind of courage does our society reward as highly?

He says nothing about this fear, so I say nothing. But I do not doubt that he feels it. He will not say anything, not yet, because admitting fear is not part of his code. One day, perhaps, we will discuss fear, and I may tell him he is displaying more courage than his brother who joined the Marines because his background told him to-or than I when I became a conscientious objector because it was natural to me. Perhaps I will be able to tell him that not to fear dying is a form of madness, a madness highly regarded in a culture which can kill hundreds of thousands at the touch of a button. Few are unafraid, for it is natural to be afraid. Those who are not often win medals and lose themselves when the shooting is over.

We discuss the questions he must answer in his discharge application. He has read them and found them confusing. I suggest that the problem is not in him, but in the questions. It is easy enough to state the nature of one's belief, and to show how that leads to objection to war. That may entail struggle, but at least the meaning of the question is clear.

But here is a question about how his beliefs have changed his life, about outward signs that he is an objector. This is impossible: there are no outward signs, and some actions he might take-such as disobeying orders-could lead to court-martial. He violates his conscience every day he remains in the Navy, yet he must remain in the Navy in order to get out.

Or here is a question on the use of force, with force left undefined. How is he to answer it and not appear a fool? I have seen people go round and round on this question, circling endlessly and getting nowhere because one can devise contingencies by the hundreds, plan responses to them, and find that the whole house of cards collapses in the event.

The crucial point, we agree, is that military force is different. It is planned, emotionless, calculated. One usually does not hate the enemy; one kills because that is the order. Hatred, patriotism, even the will to survive, may be there, but they are only instruments of a strategy. Military people are not violent, any more than the rest of us; they have families, most are kind to animals, few actually glory in the killing that is their trade. Yet they plan for, and are instruments of, the most horrific violence we know: indiscriminate, deadly, built on an honor and camaraderie that exclude compassion even for a respected opponent and expect none in return. Enforced with nuclear weapons, it is a code that can mean the end of us. Events have caught up with it, passed it and made it lethal, yet it still remains.

We have wandered off the track, but we are both learning. He is more relaxed than before, and I can talk about war and peace for hours with anyone who wants to talk.

What did I do? He asks. Was I in the military? I explain that I was a conscientious objector under the draft, that my local board recognized me, and that I did alternative service for two years. I add, only half-jokingly, that I sometimes wish they had turned me down at least once so I could have made an appeal.

It is half-past three, and he must get back to base for a muster. At the door he asks how long all this will take. I estimate three or four months, but it all depends how long he takes on his claim, how quickly he gets the required interviews, how overworked the Navy CO Review Board is this month or next. I suggest he try writing out answers to the questions and bring them back when he has them ready. Meantime, I will find a lawyer to represent him. We shake hands, and he is gone. His footsteps echo up the stairwell.

The door protests loudly on its hinges as I close it.

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