Monday, Jan. 10, 1972

The Men Who Cannot Come Home

THE WAR

WARREN FREDERICK, 24, leads a happy, uncomplicated existence. He shares an apartment in a high-rise building in suburban Toronto with a bachelor buddy, works as a weather forecaster for a local radio station and private industry. Like many Americans in his trade, Frederick learned his meteorology in the U.S. Air Force. Unlike many, however, Frederick, disillusioned with the U.S., left the Air Force 2 1/2 years before his hitch was up and fled to Canada rather than accept his country's involvement in Viet Nam. Nor does he wish to return to stay. He scorns the notion of an amnesty because it suggests he is guilty of something (see TIME ESSAY, next page). "I don't think I did anything wrong," he says. "At least I did what I had to do. I don't think I have to be forgiven for what was morally right. That's not my impression of amnesty." Back home in Johnston, Pa., his mother, Mrs. Betty Frederick, goes along: "Some parents disown their sons for this, but I can't. If he feels that this is right, who am I to say it is not?"

No Crime. Many of the estimated 70,000 American draft dodgers and deserters--concentrated mainly in Canada and Sweden--profess to share Frederick's feeling that amnesty proposals are irrelevant and even insulting. Indeed, they believe that there is a prevalent misconception in the U.S. that those who have escaped from military service are a sorry breed of men without a country, steeped in expatriate misery, who want only to be exonerated and allowed to return to their native land. Says Bob Anderson, 21, Frederick's roommate, who also deserted from the Air Force: "I don't think I committed any great crime by not wanting to go to Viet Nam. I personally feel that Canada is a better place to live. The life-style is much freer."

A Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican agrees: "There's more space here, space where people can do things for themselves with less pressure, experiment with things. I have found Canada to be a very good school--a place for learning on all levels." Comments Robert Gardner, 50, the coordinator of the Canadian Council of Churches' ministry to U.S. draft-age immigrants in Canada: "Everything written and broadcast in the U.S. has been done so from the perspective that dodgers are poor, sad, lonely exiles. This is nonsense. Certainly the decision and act may have tragic implications. But many dodgers have made new and successful lives for themselves."

Gardner breaks down America's emigres into two distinct categories. The first group, he says, "were privileged young men from an educated class. They are reflective and politically aware. They arrived here with monetary resources and with plans because they had made their decision carefully." The other group is composed of dodgers or deserters from working-class backgrounds with scanty formal education, who have run the border impulsively, often with no money and no immediate plans. He claims that the vast majority of that group are faring well too. "They have interesting jobs and adapt quickly to Canada," says Gardner. "Many of them are no longer exiles. They've become new Canadians."

Many other young war resisters have become new Swedes. The first U.S. Army deserter landed in Sweden in 1967 after the escalation of the Viet Nam War. Since then, 660 Americans of military age have applied for permission to live in Sweden. It is not automatically granted; the standards for acceptance set up by the Swedish government stipulate that the dodgers and deserters must demonstrate that they were very probably in line for shipment to Indochina. As a statement from the Swedish chapter of Amnesty International carefully points out: "We have helped draft resisters and deserters in a humanitarian way if they have been destitute. That's all. We haven't mixed in policy matters."

Because of language and cultural differences, Sweden has experienced more problems with young escapees than Canada. By far the largest majority of these are deserters, principally from Army bases in Germany. Drugs have been a nagging problem in the major cities. Sweden is a tightly structured society, and some Americans have found it as difficult to conform to the Scandinavian brand of red tape as to military life. Then, too, they are often disappointed to find they can only scrape up menial jobs. As one ex-serviceman growled in a television interview: "I didn't come to Sweden to wash dishes."

Families. Despite these difficulties, many have found a new and permanent way of life, which frequently includes wives and families. More often than not, they do so with economic and educational assistance from the government. Says one, a two-year resident who is attending a free 50-week shipwright course and receiving a living allowance to boot: "There's no way I would go back. I'm getting an education and learning how to do something I want to do." Adds Herb Rains, 22, a former Army reservist who now works as a counselor for incoming resisters in Malmo: 'There's simply nothing for me to go back to. I'm very much involved in the Swedish way of life, and I like it."

There is a kind of vagrant esprit among the exiles that keeps negative comment or complaint to a minimum. If indeed an amnesty or pardon were offered, many would doubtless elect to come home, particularly as the years accumulate. As Mike Powers, spokesman for the American Deserters Committee in Sweden, says: "Sure we want to go home, but we won't until the U.S. stops all its bombings, until there's total withdrawal from Indochina and the people there are left in peace to decide their own future."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.