I thought we had a thread dedicated to this subject, but, if that is indeed the case, I couldn't find it. There's a brief discussion here (
http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=2126) but I figured that perhaps this topic deserved its own thread.
I was hoping for a broader treatment of the subject, but Charles Glass'
The Deserters is an interesting snapshot of desertion from the U.S. and British armies during WWII. There are fairly detailed profiles of three American servicemen who deserted, and one Brit (in North Africa, of all places).
The first thing that struck me is how desertion/deserter is defined. One of the figures profiled in the book was separated from his unit and joined a group of French partisans, taking part in combat operations against German troops. Since he was AWOL from his parent unit, he was considered a deserter. So, it's very possible that survivors from the destruction of the U.S. 5th ID, for example, could be considered, by the letter of the law, as deserters.
The other thing I learned is that most deserters were men who were either new replacements or whose original units had sustained so many casualties that they consisted mostly of replacements. As a result of such large numbers of replacements, the camaraderie that bonds men together in battle was weakened to the point where a not insignificant number of American and British troops ended up deserting.