Biography
George Samuel Miller was a Mennonite conscientious objector who was inducted at Camp Dodge, Iowa, on July 23, 1918. Non-commissioned officers in his company treated him harshly — in August 1918 a corporal broke his nose for refusing to do kitchen work. He was court-martialed on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, and sentenced to fifteen years; on Christmas Eve he was sent to the disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he spent time in solitary confinement for refusing to work. He was discharged on May 1, 1919. He later lived in Wellman, Iowa, and recounted his experience in a taped interview with Roger Golden on December 18, 1968, preserved in the Mennonite Central Committee's Civilian Public Service oral-history archive.
Earlier guardhouse custody in Miller’s oral-history account
A two-page transcript excerpt records Miller saying that he and other conscientious objectors were put in a guardhouse, with the date “Sept. 24, 1918” included in parentheses. He distinguishes that confinement from a later guardhouse for men already sentenced and on their way to Leavenworth. He also describes an informal prisoner-run “kangaroo court” and coercion connected with his refusal to wear the uniform. These are attributed recollections, not a newly verified court judgment. The interview’s “just once” and “one day” answers concern that informal proceeding, not the total length of his imprisonment.
The second page continues the account and names Sanford Yoder as someone Miller said saw him afterward; it does not establish Yoder’s own imprisonment. Its two editorial footnotes concern later medical treatment and a letter written more than fifty years afterward, not dated release records or a measured custody term. The supplied PDF contains only printed pages 164–165. The collection index identifies these materials with George S. Miller’s December 18, 1968 taped interview with Roger Golden and describes the sourcebook’s broader interview coverage as pages 161–169; those additional pages are not present in this two-page file.
The September guardhouse date is not an independently established first-arrest day, and these two pages do not prove uninterrupted confinement from that date through the existing Leavenworth interval. No separate case is created for the internal guardhouse/Leavenworth movements. The existing December 24, 1918 Leavenworth start, May 1, 1919 endpoint and 128-day stored interval remain unchanged; this excerpt does not independently verify their complete continuity or turn its healing-time references into a custody duration.
George S. Miller oral-history excerpt, original PDF pages 1–2, printed pages 164–165; Mennonite Central Committee Civilian Public Service oral-history collection index, interview identity and broader sourcebook description.
