- Reaction score
- 2,560
- Points
- 1,260
As for the lead sentence to this story, I'd characterize this man's actions more as "walking away from his job" than "quitting" ....
The story is bizarre enough to serve as the plot of an action movie: 2nd Lt. Lawrence J. Franks Jr. quit his job in the U.S. Army, fled the country and secretly enlisted in the elite French Foreign Legion under an assumed name, authorities said. He deployed numerous times, including during a conflict in Mali, and then turned himself in to U.S. officials this year, seemingly at peace with what he had done.
“I needed to be wet and cold and hungry,” Franks said, according to the New York Times. “I needed the grueling life I could only find in a place like the Legion.”
Franks was court-martialed and convicted, and was sentenced Monday to four years imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., for conduct unbecoming an officer and desertion with intention to shirk duty. By fleeing his unit March 30, 2009, at Fort Drum, N.Y., Franks avoided deployment and prompted a manhunt because of concerns that he might have been lost or injured in the cold woods of upstate New York, Army officials said.
( .... )
The lieutenant’s father, Lawrence Franks Sr., said in a letter to the editor published in April 2009 in an Oregon newspaper that New York State Police determined the soldier had flown to Zurich, Switzerland, and passed through Swiss customs. Then he disappeared — right up until this year, after five years in the Legion .....