The 12 Days of Christmas are rapidly coming to a close. We’re marking the occasion with a look at an interview COL James N. “Nick” Rowe gave in the mid 1980s with the staff chaplain at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. The U.S. Army Special Operations History Office broke the interview into 12 segments and uploaded it to its YouTube channel, “The 12 Days of Resilience,” as it were. It’s Day 10, and the topic is the difference between dissent and disloyalty.
First, though, COL Rowe reminds us that when you enter the Army (or any branch of service) you raise your right hand (fingers together, thumb aligned—let’s try to look like we know what we’re doing) and pledge to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This means you do so at the risk of your life. You are expendable. If you’re fuzzy on the wording, it goes like this:
I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
When COL Rowe attended High School in the 1950s, students received a thorough education in civics and the founding of our country, including actually reading our founding documents. His strong understanding of what the founding of our country meant—the most freedom for the most amount of people—protected him from the efforts of the enemy to blur his loyalties. This, combined with the fifth tenant of the Code of Conduct bolstered his belief in the republic and his ability to remain loyal to the United States, her allies, and their cause under interrogation. Here’s how it reads:
- When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am bound to give only name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statement disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.
However, he did begin to doubt when by 1967, the enemy was daily verbally harassing him for a statement that denounced the country and his actions on her behalf, using comments from his own Congressmen as quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, and the Congressional Record. (In fact, the anti-war, anti-mission, anti-military fervor at home had a direct effect on COL Rowe’s experiences in prison.) He wrote in his book, “Five Years to Freedom” that he began to question everything he thought he stood for.
Fortunately, all that he had brought with him—the love he was raised with, his supportive church, his strong education, his training at West Point and in Special Forces—were enough to get him through the daily assaults on this mind, body, and spirit. He realized then that he fought for the right to dissent, but that he could never be disloyal—although he only had to quote from his own congressmen and the VC would have eased up on him. Every American has the right to dissent; but no serviceman has the right to give an oral or written statement against the U.S., her allies, or their cause.
On Day 11 of “The 12 Days of Resilience,” COL Rowe will discuss the government versus the people in it.
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