News

Pfc. Colton Turner—Conscientious Objector

By Bob Meola, Courage to Resist. April 13, 2011

U.S. Army Pfc. Colton Turner is a twenty year old conscientious objector.  Presently the Army is playing mind games with him and has been acting less than honorably in processing his application for Conscientious Objector classification.  On April 11th, after nearly six months of stalling and failing to properly address Turner’s request for recognition as a C.O. based upon his Christian faith and sincere beliefs, and instead responding to him in inappropriate ways, the Army issued Turner a whole new set of gear—the kind that is issued to a soldier who is about to be deployed. Turner received a new bulletproof vest, an assault pack, pocket knife, ammo pouches, grenade pouches, and a seatbelt cutter among other things.  According to his attorney, James Branum, on April 11th, “It is unclear at this time what the command’s intentions are, but it appears that they may be planning to ignore the alleged AWOL and instead pressure Colton to go on a deployment and fight in violation of his conscience.”   Turner’s defense team hopes to dissuade the command of this idea as Colton is resolved that he cannot deploy. But as of today, April 13th, Turner is now on a deployment list.

The week prior to being issued the deployment gear, after repeated refusals by Turner’s commander Captain to return phone calls to attorney Branum regarding Turner’s case, Branum was twice hung up on by Turner’s 1st Sgt. who said he would only talk to a military lawyer, not a civilian lawyer, ignoring Turner’s rights, under the Constitution and under military regulations, to use a civilian attorney. Branum had been trying to ascertain what the command’s intentions were after Turner was told during the prior week that he would be facing an Article 15 charge based on his alleged AWOL.  It would be up to Turner whether to accept an Article 15.

Article 15 refers to a section of the UCMJ that permits a commander to punish a soldier for violations of the UCMJ, without it going to a full court-martial. The maximum punishment possible in an article 15 varies based on the rank of the prosecuting commander, but normally a soldier can receive extra duty, loss of pay, loss of rank, and restriction to post as punishment in an Article 15. However, a soldier can only be punished in an article 15 if he or she consents to the process. If a soldier refuses to consent to an article 15, the commander is left with three options - (1) proceeding with a court-martial, (2) ignoring the offense and keeping the soldier in the Army, or (3) chapter the soldier out of the Army (normally under the grounds of "patterns of misconduct").

Also it is important to note that an article 15 does NOT count as double-jeopardy, meaning that a soldier could be tried in a court-martial for an offense, even if that soldier had already been punished through an article 15 for the very same offense.

In this case, Colton decided to accept an article 15, but only if he knew he was going to be discharged afterwards; otherwise Colton planned to reject the article 15. Colton's civilian attorney, James Branum, tried to contact Colton's commander, Captain Heidenreich, but he never would answer his line, so instead, the attorney called First Sergeant McClurkin on April 7th.  Branum hoped to simply inquire as to the command's intentions as to what they would do after the article 15, but 1SG McClurkin refused to speak to the attorney and hung up on the phone. The attorney phoned McClurkin a second time but was told by the 1SG that he would only talk to military attorneys and that the civilian lawyer could not call him anymore. The attorney pressed the issue but the 1SG refused to speak further and hung up on the attorney a second time. Since that time, Colton has received no further information about the possible pending article 15.

Turner was raised on a farm in Prospect Hill, a very small community in Caswell County, North Carolina.  The town consists of a store and a gas station. When Colton was nineteen, he joined the army. There was no job market in Colton’s community. Colton began having visits to his school by U.S. Army recruiters when he was in the ninth grade. “They [recruiters] never mentioned the negatives,” said Colton.  The recruiters didn’t talk about PTSD, people getting dismembered, having limbs blown off or the horrors of war.”

The recruiters had posters and pamphlets in Colton’s high school, in the town of Yanceyville, all the time. They showed up in person about every month or every other month.  In the tenth grade, Colton sat in on a recruitment session. The recruiters set up in the cafeteria at lunch and asked kids, “Do you want to join the army?”   When I talked with Colton on March 22nd, he said, “They’d ease into it. They’d ask, ‘Do you play sports?’ They’d try to get on a buddy level with you first. When they realized I was an adventurous person, they said the army had a lot of adventure.  If I said I liked football, they’d say I could play football in the army.  If I had said I wanted to be a veterinarian, they would’ve said I could be a veterinarian in the army.

“They made a presentation in my classes—in my tenth and eleventh grade math classes for about an hour and a half. There were about twenty to twenty-five kids in the classes.  The recruiters talked about the great career choice it is—to go into the army.  They’d say you can do this and you can do this.  People asked about the pay and the GI Bill for colleges.  One guy asked, ‘Did you ever have to kill anybody?’ The soldier said he had to kill people in Iraq and some kids got real interested in hearing more about that.  He[soldier] tried to steer away from that . They never brought up the wars—even at the recruiting station.

“The army recruiters called me on the phone in tenth and eleventh grade.  I think I was about sixteen at the time.  Around eleventh grade, I started thinking of signing up. I couldn’t afford college on my own.  I thought I’d be doing a great thing for my country—that it would be honorable to serve my country.

“They called me early in my senior year.  I had enough credits to graduate early—in January after one semester of twelfth grade.  Welding and automotive technology were my favorite subjects.  I thought I could get welding experience and schooling in the army and then use the GI Bill to go to college.  “I said I’d meet with them.  They came and picked me up Septemberish and took me to the recruiting station in Burlington, North Carolina and I joined the Delayed Entry Program .

“I stayed in touch with them. They promoted me from an E-2 to an E-3 because I got another boy to sign up.  I started as an E-1 and they made me an E-2 because I memorized the rank structure.  They gave me stuff to hand out to try to get others to join.

“I was a walking billboard for the U.S. Army.  They gave me t-shirts, key chains, coffee mugs, ink pens, water bottles, folders, all with army branding on them. They all said ‘U.S. Army’ in ACU [Army Combat Uniform] colors of tan and light green in camouflage pattern on the items.

“I started running a mile with them and doing push-ups with them once a week to get ready for basic training—to prepare me physically.  From January to April, I still saw them once a week. My basic training started in April [2010].  They had me take the oath in September [2009] but that wasn’t real.  I took it again in April right before I left for basic training at the MEPS station [Military Entrance Processing Station] in Raleigh, North Carolina.  They had me show up at the recruiting station on April 20th.  They put me on a shuttle bus with two or three others and took me to the MEPS station.

“They put me in a hotel overnight. They did a lot of paper work and background checks.  I got to officially pick my MOS [Military Occupational Specialty]. I wound up being a 13Fox—13F—a forward observer for artillery. I don’t know how that happened. They said, ‘This is what we have opened right now.’ The choices were petroleum supply specialist, infantry, forward observer, and maps and satellite imagery. They said they didn’t have a slot open for welders at the time.

“I stayed there overnight and then I went on to basic training in Fort Sill, Oklahoma on April 21st or 22nd. I was there for nine weeks. It wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be. We had an EST thing—a simulation trainer. I was with five or six other people. It would tell you, as if you were patrolling the Iraqi border, ‘A van drives up and moves over. You must decide what to do.’ They gave us M-16s modified to shoot like a laser at the TV screen. It’s kind of like laser tag.  Everyone started shooting to kill.  I had an issue. The guy got out of the van with an AK-47.  But a woman and kids got out and started running in the opposite direction.  Everyone with me—all the soldiers—shot the guy with the AK-47.  But they shot everybody else too.  They intentionally aimed lots of shots, dead on, at the woman and kids too.  They were accurately placed rounds. I’d say five rounds hit the woman and kids.  Sometimes there were twelve of us.  It was between six and twelve of us all the time.

“It bothered me that they got hit. They weren’t bothering anybody and I thought that if we weren’t here, this wouldn’t be happening.  We used it [simulation trainer] once in basic and once in A.I.T. [Advanced Individual Training].  I thought it was barbaric.  The right answer to anything the sergeant said was, ‘Kill!’  After basic training I spent six weeks in A.I.T.—also at Fort Sill.

“The trainers were combat experienced.  They were like the devil. They loved violence.  They loved killing.  You could tell when they talked that they were crazy.  They just wanted to kill people and animals.  They were going over hand to hand combat and teaching us how to kill with bare hands—how to approach vehicles and kill people in vehicles.  It was a more stressful situation for me than basic training was.  Basic was more motivational.  The instructors in A.I.T. were a breed of their own.  They abused the soldiers.  They could’ve gotten in trouble if they’d pushed it a little more.

“We would call in 155 mm. artillery rounds.  They said everything within a certain distance is dead.  You’d use it to base where to fire the next round. It would be three rounds before we hit our target.  I’d think about if it was real, we’d be hitting people we weren’t targeting.   The army calls that collateral damage. I call that a problem.

“After A.I.T., I went back to North Carolina for HRAP, the Hometown Recruiting Assistance Program, for two weeks.  I went to the recruiting station.  They took me to my high school to tell kids how cool it was to be in the army.  I was thinking that I didn’t like this.  I didn’t want to be in the army and I didn’t want to take part in the war and I didn’t want other kids to sign up.

“Basic training and A.I.T. made me think about things and I didn’t want to be in the wars.  I saw a couple of my friends.  They asked how I liked it. I gave them facts.  I didn’t give them my real opinions.  I had the recruiters standing right there.  Later on, people texted me and I told them how I felt and I told them they wouldn’t want to do these things.  I told them they’d have to do illegal things and they wouldn’t want it on their consciences that they killed innocent people who didn’t need to be killed.

“I had two weeks leave including a couple of days on duty in the recruiting station just sitting there.  Six to ten people walked in with questions in those two weeks.  They’d ask about basic training and I gave them the facts—the pay, the food. 

“September1st or 2nd, I flew to Colorado to the in-processing center at Fort Carson.  I got to my unit. There was more paper work and some free time for a number of days.  After 5:00 P.M., I had time to look at a computer.  I had decided during HRAP I wanted out of the army.  I was back home looking at things with a different light.  I didn’t want to kill people.  I wanted to get out.

“Over the internet, I learned about Conscientious Objectors.  I was searching for how to get out of the army.  I found all the ways out.  When I read about C.O.s, I found out that was exactly what was going on with me.  I didn’t know the words for it, but it fit me.  It was exactly why I wanted out and it was the route to go.  I am a C.O.

“I hadn’t been in Ft. Carson a week before I was filling out a Conscientious Objector application.  I answered all the questions to the best of my ability.  I stumbled upon a website about Chas Davis.  He was a C.O.  He’d gotten out and wrote about how it went.  He wrote a journal about how it went—a short story explaining the entire process and how things worked out for him.

“Around late September or early October, I got in touch with the GI Rights Hotline.  They put me in touch with the counselor.  I sent him a copy of my C.O. packet.  He read it and said it was good but he thought I should say more than I did.  I wrote more and they said it was good. Then I got in touch with a military chaplain and explained what was going on with me.  He was pretty supportive and saw that I was sincere.  He advised me to make sure my application was right the way I wanted it to be before I turned it in and before I mentioned it to anybody else because once the chain of command knew what I wanted, they would probably start giving me a hard time and that probably if I had a boot lace untied or if the uniform was a little dirty, they wouldn’t say something to somebody else—but they would to me, if I was a Conscientious Objector.

“I turned in my C.O. application on October 22nd.  I had a JAG and a chaplain read over it and made sure I had my ducks in a row.  I told my Staff Sgt. about it right before I turned it in—maybe two or three days before.  I said I needed to talk to him.  He asked me what about.  I told him I didn’t want to be a part of this war anymore. I told him I had a strong feeling against fighting and that I didn’t want to kill people and I thought it was the wrong thing to do.  He told me—he said that if that’s what I wanted, that’s that.  He said, basically I had my thoughts and he had his and he wasn’t gonna say anything about mine.  He wasn’t gonna judge me for what I believed if I didn’t judge him for what he believed.  But in actuality, he seemed a little bit mad about it.  And that later showed up.  We—my staff Sgt. and me—turned in my C.O. packet on October 22nd.

“Sixteen days later, it was sent back to us saying the 4187 form was outdated.  That was a request for personnel action form.   They use that form for a lot of things. Many things require that form.  I had printed that form myself.  That made me wonder if they were taking me seriously because they took a half a month to tell me a piece of paper wasn’t correct.   We didn’t hear anything for a long time.  November 8th, the packet came back denied.  They should have told me that the form was wrong right away.

“My Staff Sgt. went on line and printed out the updated form and we turned it in about one half hour to an hour later.  During the sixteen days whenever I asked the Staff Sgt. what was going on, he said the Commander and he would call me when the Commander wanted to talk to me.  I asked my Staff Sgt. again after we re-submitted it.  Time went on and on and it was always the same answer from my Staff Sgt. when I asked what was going on.  I asked at least once a week—sometimes twice a week and up to but not more than three times a week.

“Sometime between first submitting it and November 8th, I asked my Staff Sgt. if I could make my appointments with the chaplain and with mental health.  Those two appointments are required to see if you are sincere about being a C.O.   He said, ‘Yeah, sure. Go ahead and make the appointments.’

“On November 10th, I had an appointment set up with the brigade chaplain—a chaplain pretty high up the chain—not the one I’d talked to already.  I went to that appointment.  He said I was sincere and he wrote me a letter saying that I was sincere and should be recognized as a conscientious objector.  That later was submitted by my Staff Sgt. and added to my C.O. packet.

“I had my mental health appointment and had my evaluation on November 16th.  The evaluation came back saying I was sane and aware of what I was doing.  That letter was also submitted to my packet—my C.O. file.

“From that point to mid-December, I wasn’t told anything.  I was in the dark. I kept asking to speak with my Commander and getting the same response.

“At one point, my Staff Sgt. finally told me, ‘Turner, quit asking me about your crap.  That’s exactly what it is to me—crap.  I don’t really care about your crap.’  That was sometime in late November.

“It bothered me that I wasn’t being allowed to speak with my Commander.  They were violating the open door policy.  It was implied that if I went to the Commander by myself, things weren’t going to come out good.  It was implied by my Staff Sgt. and others in my squad that it wouldn’t be good—those people outranked me.  They strongly implied that it would not be in my best interest to go to the Commander by myself.  It made me think I’d be harassed and punished somehow if I did.

“I was a little shocked that I didn’t have anybody on my side and that I was basically being ignored.

“We went into the field for field exercises for about two weeks.  I was assigned a noncombatant role in the kitchen and I didn’t have to carry a gun.”  One day, while not on KP duty, “I’m sitting in the TOC [Tactical Operations Center], which is a room full of computers and electronics and a Sgt. asked me to log into this computer system.  I asked to speak with him in private.   I told him, ‘You are aware that I put in for C.O. status and I’m not participating in combat duties or training.’   [The] Sgt. (name deleted) pretty much flipped shit and threw a tantrum.  He said, ‘I don’t give a shit about your conscience.  You’re gonna do what you’re told.  You’re gonna log targets.’

“I said, ‘Sgt._____, I’m not logging targets into that computer system.’  He continued screaming and yelling.  Chief Warrant Officer (name deleted), Second Class diffused the situation.  He came over and got Sgt.____ to calm down. 

“Then Sgt. 1rst Class (name deleted) came over and said, ‘Turner, sit at the door and check people’s I.D.s when they come in.’ I did that.  It wasn’t combat.

“Later that day, Sgt. _____ and Staff Sgt. (name deleted) came into the T.O.C. and had me go with them into a room and they gave me a negative counseling statement. It was paperwork—basically a warning ticket for ‘failure to obey a direct order.’  They threatened me with an article 15—a non-judicial punishment where they take money and rank from you and make you  do extra duty.  I refused to sign the statement.  I explained that I was within my rights as a Conscientious Objector to not follow that order [to log targets into the computer system].

“Later, my first Sgt. was going to counsel me on my C.O. file.  He said he was requesting a 1-AO classification, meaning I would remain in the military as a noncombatant. I had applied for a 1-O status, which is a discharge as a Conscientious Objector.  It was clear on my application.  So, this hurt my morale.  I was being screwed with.  This was mid-December.  He should have come to me to counsel me regarding my C.O. classification a day or two after I turned in my application.  I said that’s not right.  I am requesting a 1-0 separation from the army. I refused to sign the general counseling statement. Signing it would have meant that I was agreeing to the 1-AO.  So, he said, ‘See you later.’  And that was it.

“From the time I put in for the C.O. classification until the time I went AWOL, I received numerous negative counseling statements for minor infractions that nobody else was getting recognized for.  I was feeling stressed and betrayed by not being allowed to speak to my Commander and then having the 1rst Sgt. be dishonest with me about the 1-AO instead of the 1-0 and being written up on negative counseling statements constantly.  Once I was feeling betrayed, I was feeling stressed.  We got back from the field exercise and it was Christmas leave time.

“I put in for eight days leave starting on December 22nd.  It ended on the 29th.  I packed up all of my stuff.  I went home on leave.  I knew that they weren’t trying to help me and they were delaying my process. I was too stressed to be there any longer and when I went on leave, I knew I was supposed to return from it, but I just couldn’t do it.

“I stayed gone from December 29th until I turned myself in Monday, March 21st.  I decided it would be best to go back and get this over with and they’d separate me out, for being AWOL as long as I was, or they’d actually process my C.O. packet. I came back having a lawyer this time.

“If they decide to chapter me out, for being AWOL, I’m prepared to accept that, because of my beliefs, if they won’t play straight and fair and acknowledge that I deserve a 1-O classification as a Conscientious Objector.

“I’ve lost faith in their sincerity to properly process me as a Conscientious Objector at this point because of the lengthy amount of time that went by when they were intentionally not doing right by me.

“My C.O. beliefs as a Conscientious Objector are consistent with my understanding of Christianity.  It took me a little while to understand it.  I always said I was a Christian.  But the military made me understand it when I turned to the bible for answers about war and it reinforced what I was feeling about not killing. 

“At this point, I know I’m a Conscientious Objector and I don’t feel that I need the army’s approval to say that.”

James Branum is the attorney representing Colton Turner in his struggle to be discharged from the army as a Conscientious Objector.  On March 25th, Mr. Branum had this to say regarding, Colton:

“Colton is someone who did his best to play by the rules.  He was seeking to be discharged under the law.  He only left [went AWOL] after discovering that the army wasn’t playing by the same rules.”

Branum also said, “I’ve represented many clients of different faiths who have sought C.O. status.  But as a Christian, I’m always glad to see people of my faith who seek this status.  I hope that more Christians in the military take seriously Jesus’ nonviolent teachings.

“The army regs on Conscientious Objection make it clear that a C.O. applicant is to be given duties that conflict as little as possible with their beliefs.  Specifically, they mention that the applicants are not to be forced to use weapons in training.  The order for Turner to enter targets into weapons systems is a very clear violation of this reg.”

Courage to Resist supports Colton Turner’s right to be recognized and discharged by the army as a Conscientious Objector, condemns the denial of due process he has received from his command, and will support a decision by him to refuse deployment.

###