JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — David Bobbitt first suspected he was different from his fellow Marines on a crisp autumn morning five years ago in the backwoods of Virginia.
Bobbitt remembers the day like yesterday. It was just a few months after boot camp, and he was on a hunting trip with his father. Bobbitt was never a very good shot, but that day the skinny towhead from New York City was right on target.
"I shot squirrels when I was a kid, but it never quite sank in," recalled the former Marine Corps sergeant. "Then I shot that deer, and I got the picture. It was a nasty experience. I just looked at that deer and felt remorse. I never wanted to do that again."
He never did. Bobbitt refused to show up last November when his reserve unit was deployed to Saudi Arabia, choosing to hide for 11 days and declare himself a conscientious objector. Last week, he was stripped of his rank, issued a dishonorable discharge and sent to military prison for 14 months without pay for desertion and missing a military movement.
"I can't kill," Bobbitt told a judge at Camp Lejeune, the sprawling Marine base that anchors this seaside town.
Bobbitt is among 40 self-declared conscientious objectors--both active Marines and reservists--at Camp Lejeune who face criminal prosecution and court-martial proceedings for refusing to fight in the Persian Gulf War. A desertion charge generally carries a maximum five-year prison term, but in extreme cases, the death penalty.
Military prosecutor Maj. John Weil, an Arizona bankruptcy lawyer and Marine reservist, derided Bobbitt as a "sunshine patriot" whose professed objections of conscience were "pathetically convenient."
"He is an opportunist. He is a manipulator," Weil told the judge. "He will do anything to avoid responsibility for his actions."
Dozens of other unwilling warriors await hearings on similar criminal charges at military bases nationwide, in Germany and in Saudi Arabia. Peace activists, civil-rights lawyers and some conscientious objectors say hundreds more remain in hiding because they fear the wrath of a vengeful military.
The war in the Persian Gulf may be over, they say, but a spirit of charity and forgiveness has not prevailed on the home front in the postwar era. For many who elected not to bear arms, the battle has just begun.
