Deserter

“ For he would always be a deserter. A boy hiding inside a man, an outlaw hiding inside a man who at last, at least, would abide by the law. If he liked, a homeless, lonely man in a foreign land might wear his disgrace as if it were nothing more than a shirt or a coat out of fashion. A lonely man surrounded by friends and family, a naturally homeless man at home, an expatriate resident in his own country, would have to wear it next the skin, like a tattooed rose, or star, or Marbury's blue heart in a circle. ”

“ So will the warrior killed in battle, who is like a conqueror, enjoy all the delights imaginable; while a deserter is despised by all men, and covered with shame and disgrace, because he deserted his comrades in the moment of danger. ”

“ Only in rare instances will the deserter accept the entire responsibility for his act. To try to find justification for doing what we want to do is characteristic of human beings, and the deserter is no exception. ”

“ He at once said:
"There's a deserter been killed ... a German deserter."
And the three women were forthwith overcome with a great sense of peace. After the rush of events that had come upon them like a tempest, it seemed to them as though nothing could touch them now. ”

“ We should distinguish between the causes that bring about a given desertion, and the conscious motives in the mind of the deserter. It is well for the social worker to make the latter the starting point in dealing with the man, accepting the most preposterous as at least worthy of discussion. ”

“ The amusement parks near the large cities also furnish occupation for the seasonal deserter. The case worker cannot be expected to have such knowledge at his finger-tips, but he can go to people who know about the fluctuations of particular trades—to employers, union officials or fellow-workmen who may throw light on a deserter's movements. ”

“ Another step brother of the deserter, however, was placed under arrest, handcuffed and brought to jail for harboring a deserter. Operatives discovered notices that had been put on different houses in the locality of this deserter, one of them reading: “You are talking too damn much. The first thing you know the sun will rise under your house.” ”

“ Thus the setting of the story of "The Deserter" is gone, the author is gone, and who can tell at this moment whether "Hamlin," fighting in the trenches on the British front in Prance, is not also gone. ”

“ In all armies desertion while on active service is punishable by death; on the continent of Europe, owing to the system of compulsory service, desertion is infrequent, and takes place usually when the deserter wishes to leave his country altogether. ”

“ The German deserter. A file of soldiers woke us up at seven o’clock, inquiring for one of their men who ran away from Mons a month ago. They are searching the stables and the forest. They have traced him here to our commune. ”

“ So many and such sufferings produced incredible dastardliness; and deserters escaped by night, in some cases throwing themselves down, at the risk of being killed, into the city-moat; in others getting down by help of a rope from the ramparts. ”

“ There are something like a thousand deserters every month, Northern men and Southern men. I see them being marched through the city, all kinds, bareheaded, with caps, hats, with bandaged heads, with bandanas, handsome fellows, sickly fellows, wounded men, dirty, most of them in worn-out uniforms—miles of men mixed with leather, steel, horses, guns, wagons, riders, guards. ”

“ Into this atmosphere occasionally came the little human dramas that were a welcome novelty beside the big drama that dominated the picture, and it was thus that the drama of the young soldier who wished to desert came into our lives as a gripping, human document. ”

“ Directly the bed is called for, or, sunk deep among pillows in one chair, we raise our feet even an inch above the ground on another, we cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright; we become deserters. They march to battle. We float with the sticks on the stream; helter skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up—to look, for example, at the sky. ”

“ Young fellows from other provinces who find their way hither across country, God knows how. It was a good soil for deserters--brushwood, deep gullies, lonely stretches of land, and, above all, la tradizione. The tradition, he explained, of that ill-famed forest of Velletri, now extirpated. The deserters were nearly all children--the latest conscripts; a grown man seldom deserts, not because he would not like to do so, but because he has more "judgment" and can weigh the risks. The roads were patrolled by police. ”

“ I learnt afterwards that they had actually seized and bound the deserters but had been prevailed upon, by fair promises of their returning peaceably to the ship, to let them loose: the deserters however, finding an opportunity to get possession of their arms, again set the natives at defiance. ”

“ The deserters are desperate fellows, and will need careful guarding. Besides, I have had the good luck to capture some English prisoners who had escaped, and they are too precious to be allowed out of my sight. My men must take turns at watching during the night ”

“ I had, the day before this expedition, put on a pair of new shoes, which, not having got fitted to my feet, caused blisters upon them as large as cents.
The deserters were, all the time we were in pursuit of them, within three miles of the place where they left us. The man whom they forced off with them, made his escape from them soon after and returned; he told me that they saw us on our return; that they were then in Haverstraw mountan, not more than a quarter of a mile from us. Thus I had another useless and fatigueing expedition for nothing. ”

“ They could not resist close fighting. They had not been trained that way, and we ought not to dream even of training our men in long range—trench cover fighting—except under certain conditions which are clearly indicated. Circumstances will govern those conditions.
A Brief Summary—A Record "Round-Up"
While this was not the concluding chapter, or the end of my dealings, either by way of experience or adventure with these deserters, or all that was likely to grow out of it, I felt that much of the burden had been lifted. The long chase in the howling "Norther". ”

“ For it is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded mountaintop: and fail to find the way thither--to attempt impassable ways in vain, opposed and waylaid by fugitives and deserters under their captain, the “lion” and “dragon” [53] ; ”

“ The air of desertion struck him even as he landed; and is there not some secret magic in the vicinity of life, of living people, which gives the soul to the dwelling-place? Have we to more than cross the threshold of the forsaken house to feel its desertion,—to know that our echoing step will track us along stair and corridor, and that through the thin streaks of light between the shutters phantoms of the absent will flit or hover, while the dimly descried objects of the room will bring memories of bright mornings and of happy eves? ”

“ The fault, or desertion, or death of the natural protectors, turns loose upon the desert of our streets those nomade hordes of Bedouins, male and female, whose presence is being made especially palpable just now, and whose reclamation is a perplexing, yet still a hopeful problem. ”

“ The desert! He drew a deep breath of heart-felt anticipation. It was calling him more compellingly than it had ever done, bringing memories of long hot rides beneath the burning sun, of the silver radiance of the peaceful moonlit nights and the never failing glory of the dawn. He smiled a little at his own enthusiasm. It was not all peace and beauty and marvellous silence. There was battle and murder and sudden death, cruelty that was inconceivable and suffering that made him set his teeth as he thought of the needless agony he had witnessed more times than he cared to remember. ”

“ No hand tames me and goads me on—my mouth knows no bit and curb—the desert is my home—solitude my society—my own will my law—and they who strive to take and chain me, to break me down to the world's habits, or to bind me by man's opinions, will either rue the bite of the free wild beast, or see him die before the hunters, in silence and despair. ”

“ The hot wind now began to blow; and to gain strength, we took a part of the water we had brought with us, and gave part to our horses, and so we proceeded; but the slave sang no more, and the desert looked the more dreary, because we were alone. We rode on for four hours longer, and then came to the summit of these hills, where we had expected to overtake the caravan; but we looked all around, to the east, and the west, the north, and the south, and not a living thing was within sight; all that we could see was a boundless sky, and a boundless plain, and dry sand, and a burning sun. ”

“ There I was, a soldier, facing No Man's Land, across whose dark space were the Huns we have come to regard as devils in brutality, yet less than men.... And I thought of home. No man knows what home really is until he stands that lonely midnight guard. A shipwrecked sailor appreciates the comforts he once had; a desert wanderer, lost and starving, remembers the food he once wasted; a volunteer soldier, facing death in the darkness, thinks of his home! ”

“ And I—a lone exile remembered of none— My high aims abandoned,—my good acts undone— Aweary of all that is under the sun— With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan, I fly to the desert afar from man. Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side, When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life, With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife— The proud man's frown, and the base man's fear— The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear— And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly, Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy ”

“ As he walked up the rising ground toward the caves, that ground he had traversed so often when this place had been, to all intents and purposes, his home, where there had been voices and movement and life, the sense of desertion grew upon him—not only desertion of the place, but of himself. ”

“ His hope, his prayer, his frailty, his fall, his burden and agony and life—these were nothing to the desert that worked inscrutably through its millions of years, nor to the illimitable expanse of heaven, deepening its blue and opening its cold, starry eyes. But a spirit as illimitable and as inscrutable breathed out of the universe and over the immensity of desert space—a spirit that breathed to the soul of the ruined man and bade him rise and take up his burden and go on down the naked shingles of the world. ”

“ Melancholy and terrible was the truth that his desert years, so hard, so clean, so cold, so pure, the restraint of his enforced exile, had developed in him instincts masterless in their importunity. Life shrieking out of his flesh and blood for the future that nature demanded! ”

“ Dismukes didn’t rate himself high as a thinker. But he is a thinker. He knows the desert. To me he’s great. And he and I agreed that the commonly accepted idea of the desert’s lure is wrong. Men seek gold, solitude, forgetfulness. Some wander for the love of wandering. Others seek to hide from the world. Criminals are driven to the desert. Besides these, all travelers crossing the desert talk of its enchantments. They all have different reasons. Loneliness, peace, silence, beauty, wonder, sublimity—a thousand reasons! Indeed, they are all proofs of the strange call of the desert. ”

“ The solemn and melancholy appear places once instinct with life, when deserted by those familiar forms and faces that have long inhabited them. There is no desert, no uninhabited isle in the far ocean, no wild, barren, pathless tract of unmitigated sterility, which could for one moment compare in point of loneliness and desolation to a deserted city. ”

“ The horrors of war no pen can describe, no tongue can utter, no pencil can paint. The demoralizing influence over the soldier is dreadful. No doubt desertion was this fellow's aim, and, to serve his purpose, he fell into this strong temptation and crime. Desertion cost the life of one whom I saw in Mississippi sitting on a white-pine coffin and followed by his armed comrades, who were soon to take his life. ”

“ Now desertion is a great offence in a soldier; in this army it is one of the most common ; for nearly ten per cent, of the American army has deserted in Mexico, not to mention the desertions before the army reached that country. It is related that forty-eight men were hanged at once for desertion; not hanged as you judicially murder men in time of peace, privately, as if ashamed of the deed, in the corner of a gaol, and by a contrivance which shortens the agony, and makes death humane as possible. ”

“ There is little chance to run the blockade of the desert where a man may not hide, where there is neither water, nor feed, nor rest, once in a hundred miles or more!
For an hour his eyes were fixed, now on the desert behind him, whence pursuit should come, now on the golden-pink hills before him, where was sanctuary for a moment, at least. ... Nothing in all the vast space but blue and grey-the sky and the sand, nothing that seemed of the world he had left; nothing save the rank smell of the camel, and the Arab song he sang to hasten the tired beast's footsteps. ”

“ Broken, forlorn, upon the Desert sand That sucks these tears, and utterly abased, Looking across the lonely, level land, With thoughts more desolate than any waste. Planets that shine on what I so adore, Now thrown, the hour is late, in careless rest, Protect that sleep, which I may watch no more, I, the cast out, dismissed and dispossessed. Far in the hillside camp, in slumber lies What my worn eyes worship but never see. ”