Voyage Of Conscience Comes To Westhaven

A Soldier’s Peace details tour of duty in Iraq

Humboldt Sentinel
Scene 6/22/08
By Sentinel Staff

The public is invited to a free screening of the award-winning 2008 anti-war documentary “A Soldier’s Peace,” when it comes to the Westhaven Center for the Arts in July.

Army reservist Sgt. Marshall Thompson’s atonement for serving a year in Iraq—both the demanding physical one and what turned out to be a far tougher voyage of conscience—will be shown 7 p.m. July 27.

The 2008 film documents the story of Thompson, who felt so strongly about what he saw in Iraq that when he got home to his native Utah, “I just had to do something,” he said. “This is an unjust war. I couldn’t not do something.”

For Thompson, a devout Mormon and the son of the former mayor of the conservative northern Utah city of Logan, “something” meant saddling up for a 500-mile hike for peace across Utah to protest America’s invasion of Iraq.

The film will be introduced by Ted Pease, a journalism professor at Utah State University, where Thompson was one of his students. “Marshall is a quiet, soft-spoken guy. He’s no peacenik. He’s no activist—at least he wasn’t until Iraq,” Pease said. “Like a lot of Americans, he was outraged by the 9/11 attacks, which is why he joined the Army—he wanted to serve.”