“That’s when I realized I couldn’t support the war anymore, even though I will follow my orders”

As Loved Ones Fight On, War Doubts Arise
By IAN URBINA
Published: July 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/us/15protest.html?ex=1342152000&en=6e4cb58c017faf39&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

FORT EUSTIS, Va., July 11 — Cpl. April Ponce De Leon describes herself and her husband as “gung-ho marines,” and in two weeks she deploys to Iraq, where her husband has been fighting since March.

“He started telling me that he doesn’t want me to go and do the things he has been doing,” said Corporal Ponce De Leon, 22, speaking by telephone as she boxed up her belongings in their apartment near Camp Lejeune, N.C.

“He said that ‘we have all decided that it’s time for us to go home.’ I said, ‘You mean go home and rest?’ And he said, ‘I mean go home and not go back.’

“This is from someone who has been training for the past nine years to go to combat and who has spent his whole life wanting to be a marine,” she continued. “That’s when I realized I couldn’t support the war anymore, even though I will follow my orders.”

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“The soldiers have come home from a war zone with a whole different perception of how things are,” said Mr. Jones, 51, who did not want to divulge the base where he works to protect the soldiers’ confidentiality.