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This undated self-portrait provided by Army Spc. Alexis Hutchinson shows Spc. Hutchinson and her son, Kamani. Hutchinson is an Army cook and single mother based at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga. who could face criminal charges after she refused to deploy to Afghanistan, saying she had no family able to care for her child. (AP Photo/Alexis Hutchinson)
By Ed Pilkington~London Guardian
A 21-year-old single mother serving with the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division is facing a possible court martial because she failed to turn up for deployment to Afghanistan, saying that she could not find anyone to care for her infant son.
Alexis Hutchinson, who serves as an army cook, was meant to have joined her division for a flight to Kabul on 5 November, but failed to show up. She was arrested and temporarily placed in custody while her 10-month-old child Kamani was put into a daycare scheme on her military base in Savannah, Georgia.
Hutchinson denies any suggestion that she was trying to avoid deployment, insisting that she was only acting out of concern for her boy. She had placed him in the care of her mother, Angelique Hughes, in Oakland, California, but after a couple of weeks Hughes found she was overburdened and unable to commit for a whole year looking after him.
“This is an infant, and they require 24-hour care,” Hughes told Associated Press. “It was very, very stressful, just too much for me to deal with.”
