In wars large and small, there are volunteers and draftees, conscripts and nationalized militia. So things have gone around the globe since the Napoleonic Wars or longer. Aside from volunteers, it's understandable that there are many who do not want to be sucked into the death machine and therefore try to avoid the front lines. Hašek provides plenty of examples of these folks in his sprawling novel.
To wit: "The last refuge of people who didn't want to go to war was the garrison prison. I knew a substitute math teacher who didn't want to shoot at others with the artillery. He stole a watch from a lieutenant just to get locked up in the garrison prison. He did so with deliberate forethought. The war neither impressed nor enchanted him. Shooting shrapnel and grenades at the enemy and killing equally unlucky substitute teachers and mathematicians on the other side, he viewed as idiocy."
~~ Jaroslav Hašek, The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, Book One. The Samizdat edition of the new English rendition, translated by Zdeněk "Zenny" Sadloň and Emmett M. Joyce, 1st Books Library, 2000, page 81.
The scale of the First World War (1914-1918) is reflected in its staggering casualties. The Austro-Hungarian Empire suffered about 1.5 million military and half a million civilian deaths. By comparison, Germany lost four million dead, the Russian Empire, four to five million dead. The Americans, who came late to the bloodbath, lost "only" 117,000 dead (about six percent of the Austro-Hungarian total) -- not including the Great Spanish Influenza Epidemic.
Today's Rune: Harvest.
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