1970 War Deserter Finds Peace in His Court-Martial

After an emotional court-martial here Tuesday that at times served as a sad retrospective of the Vietnam War, a 45-year-old Marine corporal who deserted 25 years ago was reduced to the rank of private and given a bad-conduct discharge. He was, however, spared from serving time in a military prison.

Appearing wan and tearful, Cpl. Donald J. Bailey pleaded guilty to three instances of unauthorized absences, the last of which lasted from 1970 until last October, when, after 2 1/2 decades in Canada, he surrendered to military authorities in Bremerton, Wash. He was sent to the Marine base here, pending trial.

The son of a laborer and homemaker from Edison, N.J., Bailey joined the Marine Corps in 1968 and spent 13 months in Vietnam, winning seven medals of commendation before returning to the United States in 1970 and facing what he called a cold dose of reality. Opposition to the war left him alienated from family and friends.

He and other returning soldiers confronted protesters at Los Angeles International Airport, where they were pushed, spat on and heckled.

“They called us murderers and scumbags,” he said. “. . . If it hadn’t been the United States, we would have kicked some butt.”

He soon fled to Vancouver, then to the Canadian Rockies near Calgary, marrying and siring a son who is now 18 and “living on the streets” of Toronto, Bailey said, a truant whose errant ways forced him to mend his own.

“In a way, this is almost overwhelming after this many years,” Bailey said Tuesday, moments after Marine Circuit Judge Col. Theodore G. Hess, himself a Vietnam veteran, had sentenced him.

“I’d like to send a message out to all those Vietnam vets that are still hurting inside,” Bailey said. “Vietnam vets need to be welcomed home and dealt with through the military. Know that you will be treated fairly by the military judicial system. Come home where you belong. Say what needs to be said and feel proud of what you’ve accomplished. Let it go and get on with your lives.”

Present at the court-martial was Bob Bailey, 44, a technical writer from Seattle, who said his brother moved in with him in mid-September, in preparation for turning himself in.

“I feel it’s been a long time coming, and I can’t wait for my brother to come home,” Bob Bailey said. “A lot of people, especially in our country, have forgotten how to take responsibility for their actions. Everyone screws up, but it’s very difficult to look yourself in the face and pay the piper, especially when the potential consequences are so severe.”

Bailey will remain in the Marine Corps two to three months, pending an automatic appeal of a sentence that military officials said Tuesday could be lessened, but not strengthened, by a higher authority. A bad-conduct discharge is only slightly more lenient than a dishonorable discharge, which is usually reserved for violent crimes. It does, however, represent a felony conviction, with which Bailey appeared to be at peace.

“What I did was wrong,” he said. “It’s a criminal offense. The Marine Corps did what it needed to do. Yes, I think justice has been served here. A bad-conduct discharge represents bad conduct.”

Sporting a jar head haircut and Marine tattoos from the Vietnam era, the soft-spoken and self-proclaimed loner who treasured his time living in the mountains and on the beaches of Canada elected to be tried by a military judge. In doing so, he waived his right to a “military trial by members.”

At a news conference after his sentencing, Bailey was asked about the irony of his circumstances. In light of the fact that former President Jimmy Carter granted a full pardon to military draft dodgers in the 1970s, and former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara only recently characterized the entire war as a regrettable mistake, did he feel slighted?

“My feelings come into play,” he said, pausing before continuing. “But we’re dealing with a crime under the [Uniform Code of Military Justice]. I dropped my pack and disappeared when I should have been with the Marine Corps. I had no idea it would take so many years to get my thoughts--my focus--back. I tried to come back many times but didn’t succeed until today.”

Lt. Col. Jerry Broeckert, acting as the spokesman for Camp Pendleton, said Tuesday’s verdict “was not a politically correct decision--this was the right decision. The judge considered all the facts in this case and rendered his decision.”

Bailey’s general court-martial, which lasted almost three hours, was at times emotional, especially when he was questioned by his own counsel and cross-examined by the prosecution counsel, who was born about the time that Bailey deserted.

Three members of Bailey’s Separations Company at Camp Pendleton, his captain, chief warrant officer and sergeant, spoke passionately in his defense, saying Bailey had exhibited leadership and made major contributions since arriving at the base in October.

A baker by classification, Bailey had became a rifleman whose attachment platoon often found itself “cleaning up the remains of an operation” in Da Nang, meaning face-to-face contact with the corpses of fellow Marines, Bailey said.

“People came and went,” he said tearfully, “but we were a tight family . . . a brotherhood.”

“You saw lots of dead people?” his attorney asked.

“Yes, sir,” Bailey said, swallowing hard. “I did.”

But it was not until the spring of 1970, when Bailey returned from Vietnam, that he began to have problems: “moodiness” and a clinical depression for which military doctors later prescribed a regimen of Thorazine, he testified. Those problems led to three separate unauthorized absences, the final lasting a quarter of a century.

At first he sought refuge in his native New Jersey, only to find friends who wouldn’t speak to him and a family from which he felt hopelessly estranged.

On Dec. 3, 1970, he headed to Canada.

On Oct. 10, 1995, with the help of his brother and an attorney, he surrendered to authorities at a naval base in Bremerton, Wash. As he put it, 9,071 days of running had come to an end.

He now hopes to spend time with his parents and his three brothers and one sister, but most of all with his son, Jesse.

Bailey’s former wife, from whom Bailey was separated not long after the boy was born, lives in Toronto.

“I’m holding my head high,” he said. “Today is the beginning of the rest of my life.”