COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Leaving Military: AWOL
Salem man who went AWOL will turn himself in at Army base
ALAN GUSTAFSON, Statesman Journal
May 26, 2006
Jeremy Crawford said Thursday that he won't be AWOL much longer.Monday morning, he plans to board a Greyhound bus bound for Oklahoma City.
Next, he will make his way to nearby Fort Sill, an Army outprocessing
center, to turn himself in.
Crawford, 31, hopes for a swift discharge, but he knows that the Army
could slap him with jail time or other punishment for going AWOL for seven
weeks.
The Salem man is nervous about his fate.
"Absolutely," he said. "I can't sleep, and my stomach hurts. I'm really
stressed about going back. Because of the newspaper and everything, I
hope they don't give me a harder time than they would anybody else."
A May 18 Statesman Journal story about Crawford's case triggered an
outpouring of reaction on the newspaper's Web site. Nearly 100 comments
were posted. Many people blasted Crawford for going AWOL. Others
expressed sympathy.
Crawford joined the Internet debate, defending his unauthorized
departure.
"I wanted to let everyone know that I did not leave for any other
reason but for anxiety and depression issues," he wrote.
"I passed all the physical exams. I passed my rifle training. I wasn't
scared to go to war; it was something that was part of my job.
"I only left because I did not have the medication that I had been
taking for the last eight years. If you have never suffered from anxiety and
depression, you have no idea how hard it is without medication."
Crawford said that he should not be punished for bolting from basic
training. He alleges that he was set up to fail by an Army recruiter in
Salem, who falsely assured him that he would receive medication for
depression and anxiety.
At Fort Benning, Ga., he said, military personnel rebuffed his repeated
requests for medication. They told him that they weren't allowed to
dispense mood-stabilizing drugs, he said.
Without medication, Crawford said that he felt like he was losing his
mind. He fled from Fort Benning on April 8.
Now, the divorced father of three wants to put the episode to rest. He
expects to reach Fort Sill on Wednesday night.
Crawford said that he is thankful for his father, who paid $210 for his
bus fare.
Terry Crawford, a Navy veteran and retired Postal Service worker, hopes
that his son gets lenient treatment from the Army.
"From what I've read, if everything goes well, he could be there less
than a week," he said. "But who knows? We can just hope and wait to see what
happens."
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