A draft dodger from Viet Nam recalls the stockade

I was woken by the military police pounding on the door, was arrested and taken into the stockade, where the verbal berating and physical manhandling began. I had knowingly broken federal and martial laws but was not prepared for the degradation I would face. They bundled me out of my clothes and into a large shower room, where I was disinfected, power-hosed, shorn, shaved, inspected and processed before being put in an isolation cell where I would spend eight days.

[...]

In “the box” we were kept in our underwear, exposed to the biting night air that blew in off the North Pacific through the open barred windows. As the saying goes, “The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco”. We slept on inch-thin mattresses on ridged metal shelves, covered by a single sheet. Three of the cells had the 24-hour glare of bare light bulbs; the other two, painted black and facing a wall, were lit only by sun and moonlight. With no commodes in the cells, our toilet needs were met at the whim of the guards (too bad if you couldn’t hold it).

[...]

[They beat] the farm boy from Utah. Cowering in my isolation cell, I heard his whimpering and the sickening sound of punching. Earlier that day, the kid had got hold of a scalpel and slashed his wrists. They closed his wounds, but twice he reopened them. Now they had him in a straitjacket, lashed to his bed, and periodically beat him. The other four of us in the isolation block, although we could not see each other, took turns reading aloud from our Bibles. It got us through that dreadful night.

[...]

In the stockade my vow was sealed never to comply with this army. I saw a very dark side of our system. We were America’s own, but we were still cannon-fodder to a ruthless military and industrial machine. After ten weeks I was court martialled, but it was another 14 weeks before my Undesirable Discharge came through (“under conditions other than honourable”). It was very desirable to me.

[...]

Nine months after my release, a prisoner, 19-year-old Private Richard Bunch, was shot and killed by a guard in the stockade. All day he had been asking other prisoners how best to kill himself. Approaching a guard, he asked him, “If I run, will you shoot me?” The guard told him, “Why not run and find out?” “Aim for my head!” shouted Bunch, running. And, without a warning shout, the guard shot him at close range. The army judged this “justifiable homicide”.

[...]

Ensuing military and Congressional investigations into prison conditions in the Presidio revealed gross overcrowding, underfeeding, sadism, institutionalised racism (white on black, black on white), suicide and attempted suicide, and now even murder. If America can do it to its own citizens, should we be surprised if it does worse to those it identifies as its enemy?
  Information Clearinghouse article