WESTHAVEN—The award-winning 2008 anti-war documentary “A Soldier’s Peace,” about how one U.S. Army soldier tried to atone after serving in Iraq, comes to the Westhaven Center for the Arts in July.

The 2008 film documents the story of Sgt. Marshall Thompson, a military journalist and editor, who felt so strongly about what he saw in Iraq that, when he got home to his native Utah, “I just had to do something,” he said. “This is an unjust war. I couldn’t not do something.”

For Thompson, a devout Mormon and the son of the former mayor of the conservative northern Utah city of Logan, “something” meant saddling up for a 500-mile hike for peace across Utah to protest America’s invasion of Iraq.

Thompson’s journey—both the demanding physical one and what turned out to be a far tougher voyage of conscience—is documented in “A Soldier’s Peace,” which will be screened Saturday, July 27, at 7 p.m. at the Westhaven Center for the Arts. The movie is free and the public is welcome.

The film will be introduced by Ted Pease, a journalism professor at Utah State University, where Thompson was one of his students. “Marshall is a quiet, soft-spoken guy. He’s no peacenik. He’s no activist—at least he wasn’t until Iraq,” Pease said. “Like a lot of Americans, he was outraged by the 9/11 attacks, which is why he joined the Army—he wanted to serve.”

Thompson’s six years in the National Guard also took him into combat in Kosovo and to active duty in Korea—with marriage, a daughter and two college degrees in-between. By the time he came back from Iraq in 2006, however, his perspectives had changed. “Do I want to serve my country?” Thompson says. “Yes. Am I willing to die for my country? Yes. But I am against the war in Iraq.”

His protest walk, from the Idaho border in the north to the Arizona line 500 miles away in the south, drew international attention as well as what Thompson said was a surprising amount of support in his native state—“the reddest state in the union.”

“A Soldier’s Peace” includes appearances by anti-war activists Cindy Sheehan and Martin Sheen, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, and Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, whose story was told in the 1989 movie “Born on the Fourth of July.” This will be “A Soldier’s Peace” first screening north of San Francisco.

Following the 87-minute film, Pease will offer some further background on his friend and former student, and take questions. For further information on Thompson, his film and reviews and a trailer, see http://asoldierspeace.com/.

Serving the North Coast since 2001, the Westhaven Center for the Arts is a non-profit art gallery showcasing North Coast artists, and a grassroots community center dedicated to expanding citizen engagement and exchange.

For more information on this and other programs at the Westhaven Center, visit http://www.westhavenarts.org/ or call the WCA, 501 S. Westhaven Drive, two miles south of Trinidad, at 677-9493.