But He Fears Court-Martial if He Comes Back : Deserter Who Fled to Soviet Union Is Homesick

Living on charity and temporarily a man without a country, Wade E. Roberts is a troubled and angry young man.

The 22-year-old Californian made international headlines by fleeing his U.S. Army unit in West Germany last March and defecting to the Soviet Union. Now he’s in the news again because he wants to go home.

But Roberts understands that he faces charges of desertion at a military court-martial and probably a prison sentence if he returns to the United States. He’s not ready for that.

So he and his West German lover, Petra Neumann, have applied for visas to East Germany, possibly as a way-station to the West. They said they have been waiting for weeks for permission to go there.

A slightly built man with a black mustache, chin whiskers and an earring in his left earlobe, Roberts met with Western correspondents last week to explain his predicament. It’s not a simple story.

‘Don’t Like the Army’

He fled to the Soviet Union not for ideological reasons but as a way to escape from the Army, he said. He wanted refuge in a country that would not send him back to face a court-martial on a charge of desertion.

In fact, he said, he was registered as a Republican in his native San Bernardino, Calif., although now he would rather register as a Democrat.

“I like the United States. It’s my country, but I just don’t like the U.S. Army,” he said. He complained that his military superiors abused him repeatedly, and added, “If I let them get away with it, two or three (Army) people could destroy my life.” Roberts acknowledged that he had been punished twice for being absent without leave during Army service in Colorado before he was transferred to West Germany in November, 1986. He insisted, however, that he was a victim of injustice in both cases.

He also claimed that Tass, the Soviet news agency, put words in his mouth.

“They said I told them I was the happiest man on earth (in the Soviet Union),” he complained. “That’s bull.”

But he insisted that he never was questioned by Soviet officials about his military duties as a field wireman and, as a private, never had any access to secret information anyway.

His problems are complicated because Neumann, who is married to a man in West Germany, is about to deliver Roberts’ child but has no idea where she will give birth.

That’s one thing that angers Roberts, who asked why the child could not be born in the same hospital that treats Kremlin officials.

“They told me that that was impossible,” he said in an interview with The Times. “I said ‘This is Communism? Everyone’s supposed to be equal.’ But it did no good.”

Neumann said she went to a special clinic for foreigners in Moscow to see if she could have the baby there. “They told me I would have to pay in hard currency, but we don’t have the money,” she said.

Anger Over Hospital Rules

And Roberts showed anger over Soviet hospital rules that isolate mothers and babies for 10 days after birth, even from family visitors. “They don’t let fathers in to witness the birth, which is stupid, backward and idiotic,” Roberts said, his voice rising to a shout.

Roberts apparently knew very little about the Soviet Union before he decided to seek refuge here. He went to the Soviet Embassy in Bonn and was told to go to the Soviet Embassy in East Berlin to arrange his trip.

Neumann rented a car and, with Roberts concealed in the trunk, drove to East Berlin, where they stayed for three weeks in an apartment in the Soviet Embassy compound before they were flown here last April 2 on a regular Aeroflot flight.

Unhappy as he is in Moscow, where he says the Soviet Red Cross is paying his hotel and living expenses, Roberts says he and Neumann were miserable in Ashkhabad, capital of Turkmenia, where they spent nearly five months.

He was sent to the remote, semi-tropical region, Roberts noted, because the climate resembled his Southern California homeland and he had expressed an interest in catching snakes.

When he arrived there, however, he discovered that the best place to catch snakes was near the border with Iran, an area that was off-limits because he was a foreigner. Instead he was assigned as a caretaker at an institute studying reptiles.

Although he and Neumann were given a two-bedroom apartment last May--a real privilege--they were not pleased.

“It was falling apart,” Neumann said. “All we heard was a lot of ‘ai-ai-ai,’ ” he said, alluding to traditional Turkmenian music broadcast on neighbors’ radios.

Roberts said he was shocked by the Turkmenian traditions and culture. “They killed a sheep in front of my apartment,” he said. “They ate camels. The culture in Ashkhabad is just too much.” While there, however, he and Neumann went through a marriage ceremony, although both now insist they did not realize they were being married.

“They told us it was a registration ceremony for the kid,” Roberts said. “Suddenly they started playing wedding music,” Neumann continued, and they realized that, in Soviet eyes, they were legally married, even though Neumann still has a husband living in West Germany.

“When we found out it was a marriage ceremony, we said we wanted to be divorced immediately,” he said, but the request was refused. Their travel documents, noting they are stateless, are stamped to show that the wedding took place.

As the temperature reached 110 degrees in Ashkhabad, they decided to leave and flew to Moscow last Sept. 6 to seek permission to go to East Germany.

Roberts said he telephoned his mother, Jeannie Worley of Apple Valley, Calif., after watching films of the Los Angeles earthquake on Soviet television. She advised him to tell his story to the West.

“I would like to trade my (Army) ID card for an American passport,” Roberts said. He brightened at the thought. Then, realizing that he would have to pay a high price if he ever used it to return to the United States, he scowled.

“I need a lawyer,” he sighed.