Out of Bounds

OUT OF BOUNDS is a first-person, true story of conscience and courage that you’ll never forget. In 1941, before Pearl Harbor, life was uncertain. Would America remain at peace as Europe went to war? What would the new peacetime draft mean to American men between the ages of 21 and 35, now required to register with the Selective Service and prepare themselves for military service? Chuck Worley was in college then and, like several thousand other Americans, in the process of making up his mind to become a conscientious objector (CO). A new national system of Civilian Public Service (CPS) work camps awaited men like Worley. After being drafted and granted CO status, he tried to fit into the CPS system and its “work of national importance.” But he felt the goals of the program fell short, and he walked out. Soon he found himself in the custody of U.S. Marshals, eventually winding up in Sandstone Federal Prison in Minnesota.

OUT OF BOUNDS collects Worley’s WW II journal-like letters and poems from his time in prison. His writing provides a moving, thoughtful, heartfelt, and provocative look at the 1940s prison system in America, and what it meant to be a war resister during WW II. Prison was a lonely world for a newly married young man. Worley and his CO friends organized themselves for protests and strikes, faced solitary confinement and abuse, and fought for desegregation of the prison, all the while working to gain their freedom. Their strategies included non-cooperation, writing manifestos, and conducting hunger strikes (which led to being force-fed by the guards). Worley’s letters convey the loneliness, isolation, and struggle of fighting against “the system.” They also convey his love to his young bride, and we get a close-up look at how they struggled to build a life together when separated by war. OUT OF BOUNDS is a brave personal statement about one conscientious objector’s response to “the Good War,” and it is a lasting testament to the power of one man's refusal to abandon his beliefs against the backdrop of a world at war.