Reflection from Marvin Stucky

The following is a reflection from Marvin Stucky regarding his CO status:

“When I had my eighteenth birthday, I went to the McPherson Draft Board to register. I told them that I am registering as a conscientious objector. WHY? Don’t you want to keep on living a free and happy life in the USA? What would you do if a robber came to your place to steal and to rape your mother and sisters? Wouldn’t you put up a fight to protect them?”

“But there came a time when I had to go to Leavenworth for my physical. That was a scary time because of the public being very hateful to COs, calling them ‘yellow-bellied’ or ‘krauts.’ We rode in a bus to Leavenworth, nervous because some guys were shaved, covered with mustard and treated kind of rough on one of the trips there. I was lucky that nobody did me any physical harm, only said words that are not mentionable here.”

--Taken from The Eden Peace Witness: A Collection of Personal Accounts. Ed. Jeffery W. Koller. Kansas: Jebeko Publishing, 2004. Pp 145-50.