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40 Historical Facts Accepted as Real For Many Years

Khalid Elhassan February 14, 2020 34 min

Albrecht Gessler - William Tell — William Tell. Learn Swiss-German

35. Desertion

American soldiers in France, 1944. National WWII Museum

Slovik finally reported to his assigned unit on October 7^th, 1944, and promptly decided that serving in a front-line infantry company was not for him. The following day, he asked his company commander for reassignment to a unit in the rear, and threatened to run away if assigned to a rifle unit. Slovik’s captain told him that doing so would constitute desertion, denied his transfer request, and assigned him to a rifle platoon.

The next day, October 9^th, Slovik deserted. He walked several miles towards the rear until he reached a headquarters detachment. There, he approached one of their cooks and provided him with a prepared note, confessing to desertion.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.