Duty to Disobey: What Happened When The U.S. Military Forced Vaccines On Service Members Against Their Will

Movie Review & Guest Opinion by Alicia Boothe Haggermaker

I watched a screening of a film with an all-star cast. You've probably never heard of most of their names.

That's the point.

The film is Duty to Disobey, a Tommey Burrowes Production of a CHD Film, which was just released.

These are not Hollywood stars. They're something much more important — something that deserves the highest honor and regard. They are military service members spanning every branch of service: Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Medical Corps. Men and women who signed up to risk their lives for this country. And then risked everything again by doing and saying the right thing when it mattered most.

Among them are military doctors who understood the law, understood medical ethics, and spoke up anyway — Lt Col Theresa N. Long, MD, MPH; Pete "Doc" Chambers, Retired Lt Col Green Beret; and others who documented what command was silencing.

They were joined by civilian physicians Dr. Brian Hooker and Dr. Peter McCullough — medical professionals with the credentials and courage to document what was actually happening while institutional medicine looked the other way.

Their names don't matter for fame. Their names matter because they told the truth when telling the truth cost them everything.

When service members enlist, they enter into an unspoken contract. The military will have authority over your body, your time, your choices — but always, theoretically, in your best interest. Always with your protection as the priority.

That contract was broken.

What happened to U.S. military service members during the COVID vaccine mandate was not policy disagreement. It was not tough leadership. It was medical assault — and it was systematic, documented, and acknowledged by command-level officers as unlawful.

The Unlawful Order

In December 2020, the Pfizer EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) vaccine received limited authorization. The key word: emergency authorization. Not full approval. Emergency.

Under military law, service members have a duty to disobey unlawful orders. This is fundamental. This is constitutional. This is supposed to protect soldiers from being used as instruments of crime.

The vaccine mandate was issued as an order with no exemptions allowed — despite legal requirement for exemptions. Despite the vaccine being under emergency authorization, not full approval. Despite documented side effects already emerging in military populations.

High-ranking medical officers documented this as unlawful. Command-level officers acknowledged, privately, that it violated law. And the order stood anyway.

The Choice That Wasn't A Choice

Service members faced an impossible decision:

Refuse the unlawful order:

• Loss of career
• Separation from service
• Loss of benefits
• Family separation
• Financial ruin
• Twenty-year military careers ended with months left to full pension

Or be forced to comply:

• Physically held down and vaccinated against explicit refusal
• Medical assault by their own chain of command
• Documented severe side effects (neurological damage, myocarditis, menstrual dysfunction, other complications)
• Forced to remain silent while command silenced doctors trying to document harm

This was not a choice. This was a trap.

The duty to disobey lawful orders was rendered meaningless because both paths led to the same destination: destruction.

History Repeating: Gulf War Syndrome and Alabama's Sherrie Saunders

This is not the first time.

Gulf War Syndrome was caused by the anthrax vaccine. Service members — many who never even left the United States — became severely ill and died from vaccine-caused illness. This is documented. This is known.

In 1997, an Army medic named Sherrie Saunders was treating a soldier in basic training who became critically ill. He ended up on hospice at the VA in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Sherrie connected the dots: the only time he'd ever been sick was after a Tetanus shot at age 11, which had put him in the hospital for a month. Then the anthrax vaccine at basic training triggered the same response — severe, life-threatening illness.

She alerted her captain, who was a doctor. He took it up his chain of command. Higher-ups from Washington came to visit. Her captain resigned his commission during that interview.

Sherrie spent the next two years of her service being systematically blacklisted for reporting what she'd witnessed. When her enlistment ended in May 2000, she was relieved to leave an institution that had punished her for telling the truth.

In 2016, after screening the first Vaxxed film in Huntsville, Alabama, Sherrie and Alicia met. Within months, she became one of the highest-viewed Vaxxed whistleblower interviews, telling her story to the filmmakers as they traveled through Birmingham.

What this proves:

The military knew. Command knew. Higher-ups from Washington knew. Service members were being harmed by vaccines, and the institutional response was not investigation or accountability.

The response was silencing. Destruction of careers. Blacklisting. Forcing whistleblowers out of service.

This happened with Gulf War Syndrome. This happened to Sherrie Saunders. And now it's happening again with the COVID vaccine mandate.

The pattern is identical:

1. Service members are harmed by vaccine
2. Medical professionals report it
3. Command investigates
4. Higher authority decides to suppress information
5. Whistleblower is destroyed
6. Official narrative remains unchanged
7. More service members are harmed

This is not accident. This is not policy disagreement. This is institutional knowledge that harm is occurring + institutional decision to proceed anyway + institutional enforcement of silence through retaliation.

They have done this before. They know how to do it. They did it again.

What Lt Col Long Called It

Lt Col Theresa N. Long, MD, MPH, is an active-duty Army officer with credentials to speak on medical ethics and military law. She taught medical school. She understands informed consent. She understands the Nuremberg Code. She understands what medical assault is.

She called it by its name: medical assault.

Service members were physically held down and vaccinated against their will. This is not medical care. This is not public health. This is assault.

It violates the Geneva Conventions. It violates the Nuremberg Code. It violates the International Criminal Court's definitions of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

And it happened to American service members in American military facilities.

It happened before with Gulf War Syndrome. It happened to Sherrie Saunders and the soldier she was treating. And now it's happening again to thousands of service members who spoke out and were destroyed for it.

What We Know From Testimony

Multiple high-ranking officers from Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Medical Corps documented:

• Exemption processes designed to deny all requests (reviewing religious exemptions in seconds to deny them)
• Doctors suspended from giving medical care for granting exemptions
• Command-level acknowledgment that the order was unlawful
• Severe side effects documented in military medical databases: 1100% rise in neurological deficits, 900% rise in myocarditis
• Service members separated without benefits after 18+ years of service, months short of full pension
• Family separation — one soldier wasn't allowed to see his wife for a year
• Suicides among service members who faced destruction either way
• Military families now refusing to encourage their children to enlist because the agency can no longer be trusted

These aren't complaints. These are documented harms from officers with the highest security clearances and decades of service.

The Generation That's Done

Generational military families — people whose children would have naturally followed parents into service — now feel they cannot promote their own children joining the military.

The military was supposed to protect. Instead, it harmed.

The military was supposed to honor the contract of mutual protection. Instead, it violated it systematically.

The military was supposed to represent American values. Instead, it became an agency that has gone rogue.

Why This Matters Now

This is not about COVID. This is not about vaccines. This is about what happens when an institution violates its most fundamental duty: protection of those under its authority.

When command-level officers know an order is unlawful and issue it anyway.

When doctors are silenced for documenting harm.

When service members are forced to choose between lawful disobedience and destruction.

When the institution designed to defend the Constitution violates it systematically.

What Needs to Happen

1. Acknowledgment — The military must acknowledge this was medical assault, not policy
2. Investigation — Command officers who issued and enforced unlawful orders must face accountability
3. Restoration — Service members separated or harmed must be restored to their proper rank and benefits
4. Documentation — Full medical records must be released and analyzed to quantify actual harm
5. Prevention — Mechanisms must be restored to protect service members' right to refuse unlawful orders

Without acknowledgment and accountability, the military becomes an institution that cannot be trusted. And that's exactly where we are now.

The Hill to Die On

This is not about politics. This is not about left or right. This is about whether Americans in uniform have the same constitutional protections as civilians.

They should. They must.

Lt Col Long and others stepped forward because they understood what was happening. They documented it. They testified to it. Despite the risk to their careers, despite the institutional pressure to stay silent, they said it plainly:

What happened was medical assault. What happened was unlawful. What happened was wrong. The men and women brave enough to put their lives on the line for this country are not test subjects and they deserve better.

The military can survive many things. But it cannot survive the loss of trust that comes from violating the contract of protection.

That loss has already begun.

The question now is whether we demand actual accountability and meaningful change — or whether we repeat the pattern of Gulf War Syndrome: investigate, acknowledge, do nothing, and loop the same violation in a different uniform.

America has a solid history of investigations without consequences, acknowledgments without reform, apologies without accountability. These are a waste of taxpayer resources and a guarantee that the next violation is already being planned.

Pete Hegseth's acknowledgment means nothing if nothing actually changes. Service members deserve better than institutional theater masquerading as resolution.

This is the hill to die on.

More information on Duty to Disobey is available at https://dutytodisobeyfilm.com

The theatrical trailer for Duty to Disobey may be seen on YouTube and below:

Alicia Boothe Haggermaker is a lifelong resident of Huntsville, Alabama, and a dedicated advocate for health freedom. For more than a decade, she has worked to educate the public and policymakers on issues of medical choice and public transparency. In January 2020, she organized a delegation of physicians and health freedom advocates to Montgomery, contributing to the initial draft of legislation that became SB267.

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