David Hemler: 28 years on the run

By Robin Banerji

David Hemler deserted from the US Air Force and was on its most-wanted list for 28 years. He assumed a false identity, got married and had a family in Sweden. But in the end, the truth came out.

It was 1984, the height of the Cold War, and President Ronald Reagan was deploying Pershing II missiles in West Germany. At the time David Hemler was a 21-year-old linguist working for the US Air Force in Augsburg, Bavaria. But he was not happy.

He approached his superiors and asked for a discharge on the grounds that he had become a pacifist.

Their response was to send him to see a psychiatrist.

“I did not think being a pacifist meant I was mentally ill. But I had been feeling bad,” says Hemler. “At night I stayed up thinking and I could not sleep. I had difficulties eating also. I had passed out a few times.”

The air force did not let him leave. Instead he was stripped of his top secret job and given work as a cleaner.

After a year cleaning floors, Hemler realised that the air force was not going to release him easily.

Just deserts?

• Pte Thomas Highgate was first UK soldier executed for desertion during WWI
• 306 executions by UK/ Commonwealth military
• US Pte Eddie Slovik was shot by a firing squad on 31 January 1945, the only American to be executed for desertion during WWII
• About 20,000 executed by Nazis for desertion or treason during WWII
• Both Nazis and Soviets used punishment battalions to prevent desertion
• US soldier Jeremy Hinzman (above) deserted and fled to Canada in 2004 to avoid fighting in Iraq
• US soldier Victor Agosto court martialled in 2009 for refusing to serve in Afghanistan

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David Hemler spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service

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