According to the Army, the number of deserters who went AWOL was underreported by 853 last year. In total, 3196 people deserted their posts, or failed to report to duty, a number the Army calls within reason.
In 2005, the number of deserters was reported at 2543, not the 2011 it first reported. Some Army officials have indicated that the number of desertions are up simply because some soldiers are not coming back for their second or third terms in Iraq or Afghanistan. A fact that was denied by Maj. Anne Edgecomb.
She said "We don't have any facts to indicate that these soldiers are deserting for any reason other than what soldiers have done in the past.
According to Lt. Col. Brian Hilferty, "Although the desertion rate has gone up, it is still below pre-war levels, and the force strength remains very high.
Since 2000, some 22,468 soldiers have deserted their posts, which represented 3.41% of the total Army forces on active duty.
The Army data does not include deserters from the national guard, as Hilferty said, those numbers were unavailble at the present time, but he has no data to indicate that desertion numbers from the guard were much out of line with the regular Army members.
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