“The Deserter’s Tale”

The Story of An Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq

By Joshua Key as told to Lawrence Hill Atlantic Monthly Press New York, 2007

I had not fired my M-249 since it had stopped working a month or two earlier. I had taken part in about two hundred house raids but had months earlier lost any believe in the cause. Most of my buddies felt the same way. The house raids were nothing but an excuse to insult, intimidate, and arrest Iraqis. They gave us a convenient target to vent our frustrations, never having any real enemies to kill in battle.

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