Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri Jul-Sep 2003

Mikey,

Here’s my input. The bold is my story about what happened. The italics are just additional information about me, etc.

Okay, real quick, a bit about myself. My name is Wallace Miller (I go by my middle name, Justin). I’m a SSG in the United States Army, currently stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the state of Washington. I’ve served in Afghanistan (2006-2007) and Iraq (2008-2009). I attended Basic Combat Training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, in the summer of 2003, from July to September. The incident with Free Day Away likely occurred mid- to late-cycle, since I remember it being very hot (one picture that I have from that outing shows myself and several other soldiers posing outside the church without our BDU blouses on, in sweaty t-shirts). One caveat: the current Commanding General of Fort Leonard Wood issued a letter in January of this year to the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, stating that soldiers were no longer obligated to spend their free day at the church-sponsored event, but they can now do so on-post. I think that this is a much more egalitarian policy than “go to church or go pull details”, and I just wanted to make it clear that something right is finally being done. Still, you asked me to write you a detailed account of my run-in with military-sponsored religious indoctrination, so here’s my story:

In the summer of 2003, I was attending Basic Combat Training at Fort Leonard Wood, MO. I was a PVT (E-1) at the time, and like the rest of the soldiers there, I was in an extremely vulnerable and intimidating environment. Our days were spent doing physical training, learning basic soldiering skills, and getting “smoked” (physically corrected with repetitive exercises) whenever we screwed up. Punishment was a group event, to break down the individuals and teach us all to work as a team, so no one was a fan of rocking the boat. Eventually, about halfway through the cycle, we learned that there would be an event taking place known as Free Day Away. A local church-Tabernacle Baptist-would sponsor the trip, bussing us out of town and “sharing” their bowling alley with us by charging us five bucks a head to use it. We could also buy food there, or at a nearby convenience store. In basic training, the kinds of foods you are permitted to eat are strictly regulated, so the entire event was supposed to be a complete vacation from the perpetual tyranny of our Drill Sergeants. We were flatly told when the event was first brought up that we would not be obligated to attend any services, but that the church was doing this seemingly as an act of genuine charity.

We all should have known better.

Once the day arrived, we were all marched to the bus, and once we were about to get onto the bus, one of our Drill Sergeants-Drill Sergeant Smith-came up and plainly informed us that we would have to attend a religious service during the trip, and that if we didn’t want to, we could go back to the barracks. When asked if the personnel who stayed behind would get a day off on post, another cadre member barked that we’d be back at the barracks cleaning and doing landscaping all day if we chose to stay. In any other situation in the military, this may have been different, but when you’re in such a compromised position, facing the necessary hardened life of a basic training recruit, and the omnipresent threat of Drill Sergeant wrath, you really don’t want to deal with it if you can avoid it. You also don’t want to possibly jeopardize the welfare of your fellow soldiers, either. I know that there were several soldiers who were not Baptist, not even Protestant. Needless to say, as memory serves me, we all remained on the bus, grimly determined to enjoy a slice of pizza, bowl a few frames, and forget about the hell we’d been through for nearly three months, even if we had to swallow a dose of southern-fried Jesus to get it.

How ironic was it, then, that in escaping the hell of basic training, we were subject to the hell of Baptist America. At the end of the day’s festivities, we were herded into the church, where we listened to a preacher in a suit give a scare sermon about a girl who was foolish enough to die in a car crash without accepting Jesus Christ into her heart as her personal lord and savior. The car, according to the preacher, caught fire, and the girl was trapped inside while people heard her scream help me, I’m in hell. What profound imagery to use on such a tense group, likely bound for war, where death in a flaming vehicle was a growing reality for many service members. After the preacher was done slamming our collective psyche with what must have been the Baptist version of Scared Straight, we were promptly informed that there were religious counselors waiting to help us let Jesus into our hearts if we wanted to. Some soldiers were “already saved”, and remained in the pews. Some soldiers were “high church” (Catholic, Orthodox, Episcopal)
and had very different ideas of salvation than the congregation of the Tabernacle Baptist Church. And there were other soldiers there who weren’t even Christians-Jewish soldiers, at least one Wiccan, and who knows how many atheists or agnostics. They sat as well. Then there were the soldiers who’s emotions had been too harshly overrun by the pastor’s scary story, who ran up for an altar call, trembling and wiping their eyes (I vividly remember one soldier shuddering and sobbing in the arms of one of the “counselors”).

We went home, brushing it off and eventually forgetting about it. Nobody wanted to remember basic training, anyway, we just wanted to get on with it and leave it behind us. Eventually, though, the memory of the experience would sting the back of my mind. Ironically, it wasn’t until years later, listening to a podcast by the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation that I came across an interview they did with Military Religious Freedom Foundation organizer Mikey Weinstein, who was discussing his book, With God on Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military. As I listened to him discuss his experiences in the Air Force, I realized that Free Day Away was just a small part of a much larger, very unconstitutional picture. It would have been great to have had an organization like the MRFF at the time to provide new soldiers with the proper tools to defend their constitutional rights.

So that’s my story, to the best of my knowledge. I hope that, somehow, this helps out atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, and really anyone in the military who had the courage to put their lives on the line for something bigger than themselves, only to be forced into a conflict of conscience by powers bigger than themselves. Best of luck, and hurry up and get a CFC code!

VR,