Vietnam Era Deserter Comes In From Cold

After an emotional court-martial Tuesday that at times served as a sad retrospective of the Vietnam War, a 45-year-old Marine corporal who deserted 25 years ago was reduced to the rank of private and given a bad-conduct discharge. He was, however, spared from serving time in a military prison.

Appearing wan and tearful, Cpl. Donald J. Bailey pleaded guilty to three instances of unauthorized absences, the last of which lasted from 1970 until last October, when, after 2 1/2 decades in Canada, he surrendered to military authorities in Bremerton, Wash. He was sent to the Camp Pendleton Marine base, pending trial.

The son of a laborer and a homemaker from Edison, N.J., Bailey joined the Marine Corps in 1968 and spent 13 months in Vietnam, winning seven medals of commendation before returning to the United States in 1970 and facing what he called a cold dose of reality. Opposition to the war left him alienated from family and friends.

He and other returning soldiers confronted protesters at Los Angeles International Airport, where they were pushed, spat on and heckled.

“They called us murderers and scumbags,” he said. “If it hadn’t been the United States, we would have kicked some butt.”

He soon fled to Vancouver, then to the Canadian Rockies near Calgary, fathering a son who is now 18 and “living on the streets” of Toronto, Bailey said, a truant whose errant ways forced him to mend his own.

“In a way, this is almost overwhelming after this many years,” Bailey said Tuesday, moments after Marine Circuit Judge Col. Theodore G. Hess, himself a Vietnam veteran, had sentenced him.

“I’d like to send a message out to all those Vietnam vets who are still hurting inside,” Bailey said. “Vietnam vets need to be welcomed home and dealt with through the military. Know that you will be treated fairly by the military judicial system. Come home where you belong. Say what needs to be said and feel proud of what you’ve accomplished. Let it go and get on with your lives.”

Bailey said he experienced an emotional transformation about a month after he reported to Pendleton, when he visited a replica of the Vietnam Memorial at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park. Present at the court-martial was Bob Bailey, 44, a technical writer from Seattle, who said his brother moved in with him in mid-September, in preparation for turning himself in.

“I feel it’s been a long time coming, and I can’t wait for my brother to come home,” Bob Bailey said. “A lot of people, especially in our country, have forgotten how to take responsibility for their actions. Everyone screws up, but it’s very difficult to look yourself in the face and pay the piper, especially when the potential consequences are so severe.”

Bailey will remain in the Marine Corps two to three months, pending an automatic appeal of the sentence, which military officials said could be lessened, but not strengthened, by a higher authority. A bad-conduct discharge is only slightly more lenient than a dishonorable discharge, which is usually reserved for violent crimes. It does, however, represent a felony conviction, with which Bailey appeared to be at peace.

“What I did was wrong,” he said. “It’s a criminal offense. The Marine Corps did what it needed to do. Yes, I think justice has been served here. A bad-conduct discharge represents bad conduct.”

Sporting a jar-head haircut and Marine tattoos from the Vietnam era, the soft-spoken and self-proclaimed loner who treasured his time living in the mountains and on the beaches of Canada elected to be tried by a military judge. In doing so, he waived his right to a “military trial by members.”

At a news conference after his sentencing, Bailey was asked about the irony of his circumstances. In light of the fact that former President Jimmy Carter granted a full pardon to military draft dodgers in the 1970s, and former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara recently characterized the entire war as a regrettable mistake, did he feel slighted?

“My feelings come into play,” he said, pausing. “But we’re dealing with a crime under the [Uniform Code of Military Justice]. I dropped my pack and disappeared when I should have been with the Marine Corps. I had no idea it would take so many years to get my thoughts, my focus, back. I tried to come back many times, but didn’t succeed until today.”