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Sidebar: November 2001 When Ken Newell is questioned in court, his former wife's attorney, Pauline Quirion, always uses his service to his country in Vietnam as a weapon against him. Newell was drafted into the Army at age 19 in 1967. He did not volunteer to go. He does not like to kill people. He was put in charge of five trucks which would travel, only in the daytime because it was much too dangerous at night, to get supplies for his division. After he returned from one journey through the jungles, he was told to get some paperwork because he was being promoted to sergeant. He reported to a new lieutenant who had just arrived from the states. The officer complained that Newell had shortened the sleeves on his shirt to make it cooler, his boots still had jungle mud on them and his pants were not bloused. He also was carrying a private pistol (which he had bought in the states and had with him during his entire tour in Vietnam) because it would give him much faster protection than a carbine or rifle if he were attacked while in the truck. The officer gave him an Article 15 for those petty "violations." Pauline Quirion has always made this an important part of her attacks against Newell. She has tried to paint him as a dangerous person who was punished for carrying a gun he was not supposed to have. During the last trial, she told the judge that a DSS worker had told her about a photo the ex-wife had found in her car of Newell in Vietnam holding a gun. "She's in genuine fear of him," she told the judge. When our 19-year-old boys come back, this time from Afghanistan, will they be treated in our courts any better than the boys that the liberals sent to Vietnam?
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