
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 17, 1991                   TAG: 9104170605
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: FORT POLK, LA.                                LENGTH: Short

2ND SOLDIER CONVICTED IN DESERTION PLOT

A second National Guardsman has been convicted of plotting an abortive mass desertion from a Texas base where his unit was training for the Persian Gulf War.

Army Spc. Dwayne Brown, 19, of Lake Charles was sentenced to a year in prison and dishonorably discharged after being found guilty at a court martial Tuesday.

Last week, 24-year-old Sgt. Robert Pete, another member of the Lake Charles-based Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry, received six years and a dishonorable discharge for the Feb. 7 plot.

A third guardsman, Spc. Derrick Guidry, 24, goes on trial April 24.

The soldiers' unit had been activated during the Gulf War buildup and trained at Fort Polk and Fort Hood, Texas, but was never sent to the combat zone.

Prosecutors said Pete, Guidry and Brown were ringleaders of a plot to desert Fort Hood to protest training and other conditions there.

Word of the plot leaked out and the scheme was foiled by officers who canceled the two buses chartered by Pete for a 300-mile trip to Lake Charles, where they had planned a new conference to publicize their grievances.

A jury of five officers took 1 1/2 hours to convict Brown of charges including conspiring to strike.

by CNB