Quote:
Originally Posted by JimmyRay73
In games I played in the past we didn't worry too much about desertion. My take on it as I explained in game once was "Remember that last communication that said 'you're on your own?' That means we're just following orders by going our own way."
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Right. I agree that in the case of the 5th ID or other units that received similar messages in the course of the war, unattached troops would not immediately be considered deserters.
But I don't think it's necessarily always as clear cut as that. Soldiers that made no attempt to return to their own lines/cantonments would, technically, become deserters. Perhaps I've been reading too much lately about the Ostfront of WWII but soldiers labelled as deserters have been shot or hung on much thinner pretexts. Of course, soldiers who were making good faith efforts to return to their command would likely be granted a good deal of lattitude.
In CONUS or other theaters where encirclements or Kalisz-type scenarious were not as common, the innitiative/lattitude offered to soldiers by "You're on your own"-type "orders" probably would not be as widely afforded. So, identifying deserters would be easier. On the other hand, I can see a lot of troops returning home from their respective battlefields "deserting", at least temporarily, in order to determine the fates of their loved ones. I'm wondering how far NATO militaries would go to discourage this. There's no doubt in my mind that the Soviet army would deal very harshly with deserters. But, on the whole, I agree that rehabilitation would be the preferred method of dealing with deserters unless, of course, other crimes were committed by said deserters.
From a purely gameplay POV, that freedom afforded by "You're on your own..." is one of the things that makes T2K so cool and sets it aside from a military procedural.