Biography
Wade E. Roberts was a U.S. Army private who left his West German post in February 1987 and obtained Soviet asylum. He returned to West Germany in November 1987 and was taken into military custody on November 4. A February 1988 court-martial acquitted him of desertion, accepted his AWOL guilty plea, and imposed a bad-conduct discharge rather than a new prison term. A contemporary interview reports 112 days of detention and establishes that he was out by February 28, 1988. His personal reasons for leaving are not evidence of opposition to a particular war.
Calculated release date for the stay beginning November 4, 1987: February 24, 1988, adding the recorded completed custody duration of 112 days with elapsed-calendar-day counting. This is a calculated date from the recorded admission and duration, not a separately documented physical-discharge date.
Calculated release date
Calculated release date for the stay beginning November 4, 1987: February 24, 1988, adding the recorded completed custody duration of 112 days with elapsed-calendar-day counting. This is a calculated date from the recorded admission and duration, not a separately documented physical-discharge date.
Military custody separated from departure and AWOL listing
The November 5, 1987 AP report, physical page 5 was fully visually reviewed. Its Wednesday custody statement supplies November 4. The contemporary February 28 interview, available in the indexed full report, separates the discharge sentence from actual pretrial detention and establishes a bounded release month. Direct UPI retrieval failed; it is not claimed as a visually reviewed scan. No namesake photo installed.
