Military desertion

“ The actual perils of war, at no time greater than those of mines, railways, or merchant-shipping, would never alone deter men from service; so that we must look for other causes to explain the difficulty of recruiting and the frequency of desertion, which are the perplexity of military systems still based, as our own is, on the principle of voluntary not compulsory enlistment.
What then makes a military life so little an object of desire in countries where it can be avoided is more than its dangers, more even than its loss of liberty, its irredeemable and appalling dulness. ”

“ Congress may well have thought that making loss of citizenship a consequence of wartime desertion would affect the ability of the military authorities to control the forces with which they were expected to fight and win a major world conflict. It is not for us to deny that Congress might reasonably have believed the morale and fighting efficiency of our troops would be impaired if our soldiers knew that their fellows who had abandoned them in their time of greatest need were to remain in the communion of our citizens. ”

“ We shall then not need to concern ourselves with ‘the problem of desertion,’ ‘the effect on the army of high wage-rates in civil employment,’ and the rest of it. There will be no problem of desertion: the discernment that recognizes a citizen’s military obligation will find an effective method preventing him from running away from it. All this will come after we have been sorely defeated by some power, or combination of powers, that has not only a navy but an army. ”

“ We by no means excuse or palliate desertion to the enemy, which is universally recognized as one of the basest crimes known to military law; but most of the desertions from the Confederate army occurred during the latter part of the war, and many of them were brought about by the most heartrending letters from 168 home, telling of suffering, and even starving families, and we cannot class these cases with those who deserted to join the enemy, or to get rid of the hardships and dangers of the army. ”

“ There can be no serious question that included in Congress' power to maintain armies is the power to deal with the problem of desertion, an act plainly destructive not only of the military establishment as such, but, more importantly, of the Nation's ability to wage war effectively. ”

“ From 1708, the English mutiny acts have repeatedly, if not uniformly, contained provisions by which persons reasonably suspected of being deserters might be apprehended by a constable, and taken before a justice of the peace, and the fact of their desertion established to his satisfaction, before their surrender to the military authorities. ”

“ The lieutenant, however, seemed to me to have taken a diametrically opposite view of the matter, and as it is much to be feared that ninety-nine out of every [Pg 354] hundred of deserters apply the same flattering unction to their feelings on taking the rash, the fatal step, officers cannot too often explain to their men the heinous crime of desertion, and endeavour to show them that it is the TREASON, and NOT the TRAITOR, which finds favour in the eyes of those to whom the latter tenders his services, on deserting the standard of his native land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of course, an individual should be apprised of the consequences of his actions. The Articles of War put petitioner on notice that desertion was an offense and that, when committed in wartime, it was punishable by death. Art. 58, supra. Expatriation automatically followed by command of the Nationality Act of 1940, a duly promulgated Act of Congress. The War Department appears to have made every effort to inform individual soldiers of the gravity of the consequences of desertion ”

“ Desertion, already a frightful evil, will become the order of the day. And who will arrest the deserter, when most of those at home are engaged with him in the common cause of setting the Government at defiance? Organized bands of deserters will patrol the country, burning, plundering, and robbing indiscriminately, and our armies, already too weak, must be still further depleted at the most imminent crisis of our cause, to keep the peace and protect the lives and property of our citizens at home. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And why is a deserter's doom made so awful? Simply because the crime of desertion is so great, its demoralizing effect which it would have on the army so fatal, that it must be punished in the most telling and fearful manner. History, both sacred and secular, has put no deeper brand of infamy than on deserters. Benedict Arnold stands forth as an instance of the one, Judas Iscariot as an instance of the other. ”

“ The alarm had spread rapidly among a people still suffering from the wounds of the Seven Years' War. The only refuge was desertion, and although the frontiers were closely guarded, deserters passed daily into the neighboring territories, where, from the people at least, they found a ready reception. ”

“ It is dreaded, that if they were occasionally moved from one garrison to another, the foreigners in the service, who are exceedingly prone to desertion, might then find opportunities, which according to the present plan they cannot: for however desirous a Prussian [151] soldier may be to desert, the thing is almost impossible. The moment a man is missing, a certain number of cannons are fired, which announce the desertion to the whole country. ”

“ When there are brutal soldiers, commanded by brutal captains, it is to be supposed that much brutality is to be suffered.
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 ”

“ Further, since an immense proportion of these combatants on both sides have no wish to fight at all, being without patriotic or political convictions and very badly fed and clothed, and since it is more profitable to desert than to be taken prisoner, desertion in bulk is not uncommon, and the deserters, hurriedly enrolled to fight on the other side, indignantly re-desert when opportunity offers. ”

“ I could not reconcile the deed with my obdurate conscience—although I knew the penalty must be severe as death, to hold many in the ranks, yet so often and often men failed to know the true duty of a soldier, and the act of desertion seemed hardly enough to warrant his death at the hands of comrades. ”

“ Yet even now whole classes obtained exemption and the right of substitution as usual forced the burden of service on the poorer classes, so that of the 100,000 men called on for the regular army and 200,000 for the Volunteers, only some 180,000 were actually raised. Desertion, generally regarded as the curse of professional armies, became a conspicuous vice of the defenders of the Republic, except at moments when a supreme crisis called forth supreme devotion—moments which naturally were more or less prolonged in proportion to the gravity of the situation. ”

“ The foreign troops are so much addicted to desertion that they are very unfit for our armies, of which they necessarily form too large a proportion to the native troops. The evil is aggravated by the practice which prevails of enlisting prisoners as well as deserters, and Frenchmen as well as other foreigners, notwithstanding the repeated orders of government upon the subject. ”

“ And thus he was employed to the end of the war, enduring, with his compatriots in arms, untold privations, hardships, and dangers. Had he fallen into the hands of the enemy — having left the British service without a discharge — he would have been liable to all the dreadful penalties for desertion. ”

“ Is desertion rare and much abhorred? Or so common that men are no longer shot for it now? So you may go on enumerating until it strikes you that you are simply drifting into an inventory of all the details of the enemy's wartime life, in the field and at home. ”

“ At the same time, “separate specially reliable units are to be formed of individuals selected from steady units, whose duty will be to suppress all insubordination. These selected units will also execute the sentences of death.”
Desertion from the Red army is not difficult, but if one lives in or near a town one’s relatives pay. Desertion, being what the Bolsheviks call a “mass-phenomenon,” is combated by special Commissions for Combating Desertion, established in every town and large village and at frontier points. ”

“ For there they will probably be obliged to inlist again as soldiers; so that on the whole, however unhappy they may be, it is absurd to attempt desertion in any other way than by killing themselves, which method, as I am told, begins to prevail. ”

“ The deserters drank home-made vodka which they got from the railway servants in exchange for their (army) boots, and they were wild and turbulent.
The actual number of such "flying men" is not known. Even the Russian General Staff never knew their real number. This is hardly surprising, considering that the General Staff did not even know the number of mobilised men.
When I was in Russia, I asked every officer I met about the character and extent of the desertions from the army before the Revolution. All evidence goes to prove that desertion was a mass phenomenon. ”

“ Naked and starving as they are, we can not enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery, that they have not been, ere this, excited by their sufferings to a general mutiny and desertion.
"The situation of the camp is such," wrote General Varnum to General Greene, on the 12th of February, "that in all human probability the army must dissolve. Many of the troops are destitute of meat, and are several days in arrears. The horses are dying for want of forage. The country in the vicinity of the camp is exhausted. ”

“ Desertion is where a person, bound by his enlistment to remain in service, in violation of his duty escapes from the control of those in command. An attempt to desert is where the motive to desert is conceived, and an effort made to carry it into effect, but which is not fully accomplished, owing to the want of success, or to a change of purpose. ”

“ Many, very many men who desert give themselves up again solely because they cannot bear the misery consequent on the constant fear of being retaken; and a more lenient punishment is administered to a man who voluntarily surrenders, than if he had given much trouble in his capture. A deserter can be taken and placed in any gaol in Her Majesty’s dominions, when the police or military authorities forward the report of his capture to his regiment, if they know it ”

“ I foresaw that an "arrest," or discovery, on my part, would produce all the bad effects naturally to be apprehended from actual desertion; I mean with respect to the discouragement which such an example would have caused in the army, but particularly in the militia; and especially, as at that time the militia were assembling at Philadelphia, under General Putnam, from every part of the country, influenced by the example of the city troops, as well as by a sense of danger and duty. ”

“ Death, desertion, and the hospital, must soon swallow up an army under such circumstances; and if it were possible for men to 303maintain such a wretched existence, they would have no spirit to face their enemies, and would invariably disgrace themselves and their commander. It is impossible to presume discipline, when troops are in want of everything: to attempt severity, will only thin the ranks by more heavy desertion. ”

“ In one word, none but those who happened to belong to this army can form a notion of the hardships which it endured and the fatigue which it underwent.
Nor were these the only evils which tended to lessen our numbers. To our soldiers every inducement was held out by the enemy to desert. Printed papers, offering lands and money as the price of desertion, were thrown into the piquets, whilst individuals made a practice of approaching our posts, and endeavouring to persuade the very sentinels to quit their stations. ”

“ A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR
EXPERIENCE
I MARCHING INTO BELGIUM
At the end of July our garrison at Koblenz was feverishly agitated. Part of our men were seized by an indescribable enthusiasm, others became subject to a feeling of great depression. The declaration of war was in the air. I belonged to those who were depressed. For I was doing my second year of military service and was to leave the barracks in six weeks' time. Instead of the long wished-for return home war was facing me. ”

“ One by one soldiers will pass suddenly from ferocity to apathy: the spring of will will break, leaving millions of derelicts fit only for the hospital or the asylum. This is what the German military authorities mean when they say that the war will be decided by nervous endurance. ”

“ By § 153 any person who persuades a soldier to desert or aids or assists him or conceals him is liable, on conviction, to be imprisoned, with or without hard labour, for not more than six months. § 154 makes provision for the apprehension of deserters. § 161 lays down that where a soldier has served continuously in an exemplary manner for not less than three years in any corps of regular forces he is not to be tried or punished for desertion which has occurred before the commencement of the three years. ”