DESERTERS SURRENDERING

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 12 June 1945, Page 5

DESERTERS SURRENDERING

WANT ARMY DISCHARGE TO ENSURE PEACETIME JOB POSITION IN AUSTRALIA (Rec. 12.30 p.m.) Melbourne, This Day. Hundreds of Australian Army deserters are surrendering to the military police following the end of the war in Europe, slated an Army spokesman. “These deserters are surrendering because they know their only sure passport to a peacetime job is an Army discharge,” the spokesman added. He said that since the outbreak of war in September, 1939, the Australian Army had held more than 40,000 courts martial on charges ranging from absence without leave to riot. No charge of desertion in the face of the enemy was preferred. Records showed that many of the deserters had hidden for as long as two years before military police arrested them. Many of the absentees were traced to munitions factories. When court martialled the most common excuse of deserters was that wages ir. civil employment were better than for soldiers. Another common excuse of deserters and men absent * without leave was that their wives had been associating with other men. The spokesman said that the 40,000 courts martial were army affairs only and exclusive of those held by the R.A.N. and R.A.A.F. The official view was that 40,000 court martial charges spread over five years of war was a comparatively small number compared ,with the thousands of civil offences heard in all courts every month in Austi alia. The only comparative figures on record were a total of about a quarter of -a million courts martial in the British Army during the last war, which included charges against some members of the A.I.F. About 80 per cent, of the charges in this war involved men absent without leave more than 30 days. The sentences imposed varied from a caution to terms of imprisonment up to five years.