When I got off the bus from St. Louis Airport to Fort Leonard Wood, I was excited. I had joined the Army thinking that I would be joining an honorable organization which would teach me discipline and skills for a successful life. In less than a week, I was looking for ways to get the fuck out of the white supremacist terrorist organization that I joined.

At the rifle range, before we shot at metal pop-up targets, we adjusted our sights by firing at paper targets. For our paper targets, the Drill Sergeants printed out images of innocent Middle Eastern men, women, and children. They printed out pictures of women in burqas holding their children in their arms. They printed out pictures of little children playing soccer. They printed out pictures of a Muslim family eating dinner together. Those were the paper targets we were forced to shoot in order to sight our rifles in.

During Basic Training, we were not allowed to read the news. The only exception was when the Drill Sergeants would post articles to our unit's bulletin board. Those articles were always printed our from far-right rags such as Breitbart or even Infowars. The articles talked about how Muslims were evil, how they sacrificed innocent white children to Allah, how we needed to wipe them out. These hateful "news" articles were the only thing we were allowed to read during Basic.

The final straw came when we were practicing firing the AT4 rocket launcher. The AT4 fires a rocket designed to take out armored vehicles. But we didn't aim at any vehicles, or even any vehicle shaped targets. No, we were first given a our of a mocked up Iraqi school, filled with child sized mannequins. Then we were told fire fire our rockets at the "school" filled with children. All the while, the Drill Sergeants were telling us how "fucking awesome" it felt to see "little brown children burning alive." The glee in their voices was absolutely disturbing, and I could tell that those sociopaths actually had killed children during their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I had enough. The next day, I faked being sick in order to go to "sick call." After I stole some crutches from the Medical Clinic, I called "official express," (using the hospital phone) which is a government van which takes you to the random rifle ranges in bumfuck nowhere on Fort Leonard Wood. While we were on a backroad far away from any eyewitnesses, I beat up the driver with the crutches I stole. I beat him unconscious and tied him up with his own belt, then took his cell phone and dropped him in the middle of the woods. I took off my uniform and put on his civilian clothes, in order to disguise myself. I then set the gps on the van all the way to St. Louis Airport. I breathed the largest sigh of relief, when, at the gate of Fort Leonard Wood, the Military Police looked at me slightly funny, but didn't do anything to stop me.

To this day, I have never returned to the US Army. The Army eventually sent me a DD214 in the mail after they realized that I had gone awol. I have no regrets about beating up the official express driver: I did what I needed to do in order to escape the white supremacist terrorist organization that I was trapped in. My ONLY regret is ever joining in the first place, and not realizing how truly evil, vile, and hateful the Military was before I ever signed a contract.