A giant aircraft carrier waits beneath the fog. Its medals recall earlier wars, while its steel decks promise another. Standing below it, twenty-year-old John Hatch should feel proud. Instead, one question rises above everything else:
What am I doing here?
That uneasy moment opens the door to A.W.O.L, a memoir filled with rebellion, romance, fear, friendship, and a restless search for peace.
John Hatch joins the Navy with the discipline and enthusiasm expected of a young recruit. But when he arrives on the USS Yorktown, his view changes. The ship is less of an adventure and more a means to a conflict he can’t support.
Meanwhile, political leaders defend the Vietnam War with words such as freedom and duty. Yet thousands of young Americans keep dying. John Hatch begins wondering who benefits from their sacrifice and why questioning the war gets treated like betrayal.
However, those doubts refuse to stay quiet.
War does not create John Hatch’s crisis alone. Back home, his pregnant girlfriend, Mary Schafer, faces pressure from her family and strict social values. Their future disappears as others make decisions about her pregnancy and their child.
John Hatch remains far from home. He cannot help Mary or protect their child. Therefore, he finds himself caught between Navy duty and deep grief. Therefore, his decision to go AWOL grows from more than rebellion. Fear, heartbreak, guilt, and moral doubt all push him toward the edge.
You may not agree with his choice. However, the emotional honesty helps you understand why he makes it.
After leaving the Navy, John Hatch enters the bright, strange world of 1960s Hollywood. Music spills through coffeehouses. Hippies debate politics. Underground newspapers challenge the government. Drugs and love and protest course through the streets like electricity.
The Brave New World provides him with a refuge. The Fifth Estate introduces heated political discussion. Meanwhile, Griffith Park gives him brief moments of love and calm.
Yet freedom never feels safe. Hunger follows him. Homelessness becomes normal. All police officers are a threat, and any demand for ID may end the adventure.
Thus Hollywood becomes a haven and a gaol for both actors and the audience.
One of the most memorable characters of this military memoir book is Fast Eddy, a loyal companion and guide for John Hatch. Eddy knows the streets; he knows how to find a way out when there’s trouble, and he is able to help John Hatch navigate through a world that’s quite different from Indiana.
The friendship adds warmth and humour to the story. Together, they explore Hollywood, find an apartment, attend counterculture gatherings, sell underground newspapers, and eventually travel back toward John Hatch’s home.
Mary Ann also brings tenderness to the journey. Her love gives John Hatch a rare gift: acceptance without instant judgment. Through these relationships, A.W.O.L becomes more than a story about running away. It becomes a story about the people who help someone survive.
A typical military memoir book may celebrate bravery through combat. John Hatch follows a different road. His courage appears through uncomfortable questions about power, obedience, morality, and patriotism.
Can someone love a country while opposing its war?
Should loyalty require silence?
Who carries the consequences when political leaders fail?
These questions give the memoir its force. John Hatch does not reject America. Instead, he challenges the belief that supporting the nation means supporting every conflict conducted in its name.
Eventually, police officers find John Hatch sleeping inside a car. After months of hiding, he admits the truth. He is AWOL.
Surprisingly, the confession brings relief. The chase finally stops, although punishment waits ahead.
John Hatch later escapes restricted barracks with another sailor named Jim. It is adventurous, dramatic, and suspenseful when they escape in a Navy laundry truck. However, he knows he cannot run forever.
After returning home, John Hatch enters the brig at Great Lakes and serves nearly nine months. Military officials warn him that a bad conduct discharge will ruin his future. Their words leave a deeper wound than confinement.
For years, John Hatch carries the shame planted by those officials. Eventually, he refuses to let one decision define his identity.
He earns pilot certifications, builds a long aviation career, teaches other pilots, and logs more than 21,000 flight hours. The man once told he would never succeed goes on to build a life shaped by skill, discipline, and determination.
Therefore, the memoir’s greatest escape does not happen inside a laundry truck. It happens when John Hatch finally escapes the belief that he has no worth.
As an anti war memoir, A.W.O.L never offers an easy political speech disguised as a story. Instead, it gives you memories: fog around a warship, songs drifting through Hollywood, arguments inside coffeehouses, letters from Mary Ann, a mother’s embrace, and years spent rebuilding confidence.
Through those memories, one question remains: Why does humanity keep treating war as natural?
John Hatch answers with a lasting belief in empathy, cooperation, and peace. His journey begins with a sailor walking away from duty. But it ends with a man on his way to responsibility, to purpose, and hope.
Yes. A.W.O.L. is John Hatch’s memoir about his real experiences as a young U.S. Navy sailor during the Vietnam era, including military service, personal conflict, and his decision to leave.
John Hatch went AWOL, ever more doubtful of the war, of military life, and obedience. Duty, conscience, family pressure, love, horror, and his own convictions tore at him.
Unlike traditional combat memoirs, A.W.O.L. focuses less on battlefield action and more on one sailor’s struggle with duty, fear, love, conscience, doubt, and his decision to walk away from service.
The memoir explores duty, conscience, fear, guilt, love, family pressure, anti-war feelings, political doubt, military obedience, emotional wounds, identity, personal responsibility, and the difficult search for peace after painful choices.
A.W.O.L. is available through John Hatch’s official website, with buying options for ebook and paperback editions. It may also be found through Amazon and Barnes & Noble online stores today.
Summary
Discover why A.W.O.L by John Hatch is a powerful anti war memoir exploring Vietnam, courage, sacrifice, conscience, and the human cost of war.
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John Hatch is a Navy veteran who served in the US Navy during the Vietnam War. AWOL, his memoir, follows the story of John Hatch, who has seen the horrors of war during his life in military service. He was stuck between a sense of duty and his conscience.
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