{"id":57152,"date":"2014-12-16T11:08:05","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T16:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=57152"},"modified":"2014-12-16T11:08:05","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T16:08:05","slug":"lawrence-j-franks-jr-deserter-convicted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=57152","title":{"rendered":"Lawrence J. Franks Jr.; deserter convicted"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lawrence<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a> tells the story of Lawrence J. Franks Jr., a West Point grad who was a medical platoon leader in the 10th Mountain Division and decided that wasn’t rigorous for him, that the lack of action led him to be suicidal after his eventful four years at the Military Academy, so he decided to bolt from Fort Drum and join the French Foreign Legion;<\/p>\n

On Monday, Lieutenant Franks was sentenced to four years in prison and dismissal from the Army on charges of conduct unbecoming of an officer and desertion with the intention to shirk duty, specifically deployment.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In an interview last week at a hotel near Fort Drum, where the court-martial was held, Lieutenant Franks said that he actually yearned to go to war, but that his deployment was still almost a year away and in the meantime felt he could no longer control his suicidal urges.<\/p>\n

\u201cI needed to be wet and cold and hungry,\u201d he said. \u201cI needed the grueling life I could only find in a place like the Legion.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’s that he planned to kill himself on a pistol range by being a lieutenant – pretending to trip and discharge the weapon at himself, but then he talked himself out of that, that pesky Christian ethos thing interfered. So instead the ring knocker went AWOL.<\/p>\n

Lieutenant Franks was taken in despite being wanted by the United States Army, and, like all other recruits, was given an assumed name. He became Christopher Flaherty and signed a five-year contract.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never ask where they come from, ” a French brigadier general, Laurent Kolodziej, said in video testimony from Paris. \u201cYou have people knocking on the door, just make sure they don\u2019t have blood on their hands, and we take them in. The Legionnaires, it\u2019s about giving someone a second chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lieutenant became a lowly legionnaire second class. Being stripped of rank, possessions and identity, woken up in the middle of the night to run in the rain, deprived of sleep and food, marched for hours on end while singing the slow, sorrowful songs that are a tradition in the Legion and harangued by sergeants who knew recruits had no one to call to complain, took the focus off his inner demons, he said.
\nContinue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
\nContinue reading the main story<\/p>\n

\u201cSlowly, the depression went away,\u201d he said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t thinking of killing myself anymore.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, basically, he deserted to go to war. He probably should have found another route like going to Ranger School or volunteering for Special Forces duty. I’m pretty sure that sitting in a cell for four years isn’t going to be very therapeutic. But then, no one ever accused lieutenants of being too smart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times tells the story of Lawrence J. Franks Jr., a West Point grad … Lawrence J. Franks Jr.; deserter convicted<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dumbass-bullshit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}