Biography
Frederick Rutan, called Eric Rutan in the same contemporary account, was an Army soldier who refused deployment to Vietnam after ten months of service. Cambridge Friends Meeting sheltered him from August 11 until police arrested him in the meetinghouse on August 29, 1968. Friends attended his October 9 court-martial at Fort Devens, after which the account describes a three-month prison period and continuing support while he sought conscientious-objector status. The November–December 1968 CCCO roster separately places Eric Rutan in the Fort Monmouth, New Jersey stockade. The court-martial venue is not treated as the prison, and the three-month term is not a completed actual-service total.
Frederick Rutan, called Eric Rutan in the same contemporary account, was an Army soldier who refused deployment to Vietnam after ten months of service. Cambridge Friends Meeting sheltered him from August 11 until police arrested him in the meetinghouse on August 29, 1968. Friends attended his October 9 court-martial at Fort Devens, after which the account describes a three-month prison period and continuing support while he sought conscientious-objector status. The November–December 1968 CCCO roster separately places Eric Rutan in the Fort Monmouth, New Jersey stockade. The court-martial venue is not treated as the prison, and the three-month term is not a completed actual-service total. Three-month prison term reported after the October 9, 1968 Fort Devens court-martial. Exact admission and actual release are not established; no three-month served counter inferred.
A contemporary Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors newsletter independently lists Eric Rutan among military prisoners at the Fort Monmouth stockade in New Jersey in November–December 1968. This corroborates actual confinement; it does not establish an admission date, a release date, a transfer date from Fort Devens, or three months actually served.
CCCO newsletter, November–December 1968, PDF page4, military-prison roster.
