Hi, More of our young people need to know that there is a way out of the delayed entry program! I can't imagine how many of the goal mark of 200,000 recruits have been put through this kind of military bully pressure and lies! I hear the number is much less now and hopefully will continue to drop as we spread the word about this organization and that there IS help. It might be a good idea to get them on the radio and tell more about their help.
Brian, Kevin, Mario, and Teresa - the CCCO staff Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors 630 20th Street, Suite 302 Oakland, CA 94612 1-888-231-2226 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.objector.org **** Gerard Gratiot: Rescued from the Delayed Entry Program - Chris Lombardi Read our fact sheet on getting out of the Delayed Entry Program It's hard to know whether recruiters are getting fiercer in their tactics to stop young people from leaving the Delayed Enlistment Program or whether more of these young people are getting their hands on our 800 number. Either way, at certain times of year - June and September come to mind - one in three calls on the GI Rights Hotline has a panicked pitch: "I need help now!" "Now" is usually the week before the ship date on the caller's enlistment contract, and they've changed their mind. And their recruiter, the person who courted them, has told them a lie: "You're in the military now. No way to get out." While these calls may blend together for those of us on the Hotline - the recruiter who terrorized a young immigrant's grandparents by saying he'd never get citizenship, or the young man who was told that separation from the Delayed Entry Program would be on his social security record for fifty-three years (we're still trying to figure that one out) - Gerard Gratiot's story still stands out as a Delayed Entry Program tale with a dramatic rescue at the end! Free dog tags for real ones Gerard was seventeen, a junior in college, when he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. "I remember when I was in sixth grade, how exciting it was when a family friend was signing up for the Marines." Gerard's first contact with the military recruiting machine was an advertisement offering free dog tags if he sent his name and address. "Then came the call from a recruiter." Thus began the long and tumultuous relationship with the Marine Corps. Enter Staff Sergeant Smith. Gerard gives a description of Smith's sales pitch at their first meeting. "He gives me a list, tells me to pick out what's important to me, from a pile of little plastic cards: courage, commitment, job, family. Then he looks up in this big Marine Corps book, and he comes up with a job: yeah this job will work. He then proceeds to tell me how the United States Marine Corps will help me reach these goals." Still unsure, Gerard nonetheless told Smith he was interested enough to get ready. In the next few weeks Gerard took the ASVAB and required physical; finally he signed on the dotted line. "Everyone was so proud of me, I told myself this must be great." But Gerard had second thoughts even before he went to his first monthly Delayed Entry Program recruit meeting. He felt out of place: "These Delayed Entry Program members, most of them had been in JROTC all their lives." After two more meetings, Gerard stopped showing up. "I made excuses to my recruiter, my parentsI started working harder in school, trying to get a scholarship." As he became interested in accounting, and joined Business Persons of America, he knew in his heart he didn't want to be a Marine. Just say no? "The stress kept building upFinally I told my folks I didn't want to go in anymore. They said I didn't have a choice, I'd signed up. Then my girlfriend went online, and found the GI Rights Network." When Gerard told his recruiter he'd changed his mind, Smith "made charts with two plans: my life in 5 years, the Marine Corps in 5 years. Then he took a gun and shot my life full of holes." When Gerard persisted, "he read a paragraph from the Michigan penal code: "I could face a year in jail or a $500 fine." The next day, Gerard received a note in class to see the school guidance counselor and Smith was there. "He said it's OK, I'll change your job if you want," (a reference to the fact that Gerard had scored high enough to be assigned to intelligence) and then Smith invited him to a Delayed Entry Program barbecue. By then, Gerard knew: "I didn't want to leave my family, and I wanted to go to college. Them telling me I HAD to be there made me hate it worse." Fortunately, his accounting teacher, a veteran, taught him to press his case up the chain of command. When Gerard heard, "No one's going to be able to help you," he responded with, "Sure, can I have the number of your superior?" When he got to the captain and the latter said, "You can't back out, and the only one above me is the Commandant of the Marine Corps," Gerard said, "Well, can I get his name and number?" In the meantime Gerard had taken the advice of CCCO's Alex Doty and Eric LeCompte. He wrote a letter requesting separation in April, with plenty of time until his scheduled June 21 ship date. "I was getting ready to go to my graduation when the call came," says Gerard. "Smith was out of town. This was another sergeant, telling me my ship date had been moved up to June 15." The recruiters even came to his door but Gerard told them to go read his letter. A week went by, and Smith returned to Michigan: "You know, you're still on for the twenty-first." When Gerard denied this, Smith took Gerard to the very station commander, a major, to whom Gerard had written his letter. The major told Gerard, "If you do this, you'll never be able to get government loans. You'll never be certified as a CPA, you'll face the consequences. Make no mistake - you will be at boot camp." Smith added to the scare tactics by hinting that Gerard would face a dishonorable discharge and then he leaned over and said, "I'll tell you something I never tell anyone. Listen, get on that plane, go to boot camp. When you get there, tell the drill instructor. I guarantee you'll be back in 20 days." A siege in Troy Convinced he had no choice, Gerard went with Smith. "We go down to the Ramada right outside the MEPS center, spent the night there then he woke me up at 4 a.m. to go down to the station in Troy." When Gerard weighed a quarter of a pound over the military's weight requirement, Smith said, "Then we have to spend another night in the Hotel. Just make sure you don't eat." Gerard overheard another recruiter being told to give his 11-pound-over-the-weight-limit-recruit ex-lax. When Gerard told Smith this was all garbage and he wanted to go home, Smith started swearing: "F**k this, you decided to go. You don't have a choice, we'll call the sheriff and we'll fly you there." Once again, Gerard agreed to go, convinced they'd do it. "But I said I won't sign anything; I won't take another oath." By the next morning, Gerard had lost the required 1/4 pound of water; he watched as MEPS personnel faked numbers on the forms that recorded his strength test. "In the meantime, Smith goes by my house to pick up my stuff, and tells my mom I freaked out, that I was yelling at everybody there." Finally, the moment of truth arrived. "I'm half an hour from having to go swear in when they hand me a paper that says I request to be put on active duty." Gerard asked, "What happens if I don't sign this?" "We'll hit you with the Michigan penal code." "Look I won't sign." Smith called Gerard's mother. "Tell her you're going to jail." Amazingly, even with his mother crying, "Just sign the paper," Gerard managed to sit tight. Finally Smith called in a gunnery sergeant, who told Gerard: "You got two choices, boot camp or jail." "I'm not refusing to go," Gerard said. "I'm just not requesting this." "OK, Call your mom and tell her you're going to jail." Instead Gerard watched as the sergeant picked up the phone and listened to what he was being told. CO cavalry to the rescue While Gerard was under siege in Troy, his girlfriend had reached Alex, who then called Shazia Anwar, an attorney and executive director of NISBCO, CCCO's sister organization in Washington, D.C. Shazia had then called the head of Navy Recruiting in Washington to alert him to the extremes of his recruiters. "It was amazing, I was supposed to go to boot camp in an hour next thing I know I'm talking to that same major who told me I'd never be an accountant, and he sounds like someone from the GI Rights Hotline!" (Although the major apologized, it was for the pressure tactics, not for the lies.) Ironically, two weeks later, Smith called Gerard again. "He asked if I'd changed my mind, did I want to go now?" When I talked to Gerard at the end of July, he had recovered from his ordeal; he had also started work on a website, to talk about his experience. He plans to link to the GI Rights Hotline page <www.girights.org> to help spread the word. He knows he was just one of thousands of young people who respond to a recruiter's sales pitch and find themselves wrongly threatened. "You had to be pretty sharp," Gerard says. "You know when I was in the recruiting office, I saw all the stuff on the walls, what recruiters need to do: it said you needed to get 1.2 signed contracts for every Marine. I kept thinking, that means some people don't go! I can be that point-two-percent!" http://www.objector.org/articles/99/gerard.html __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com
