The Sandbag Times Issue No:36

ALL SOLDIERS RUN AWAy
All Soldiers
Run Away:
Alano’s War: The Story
of a British Deserter
By Andy Owen
What is the extent of a soldier’s duty?
Under the vast majority of the world’s military
criminal codes, punishments for the crime
of desertion range from prison time to the
death penalty. And yet, from the American Civil
War (wherein the Union Army saw somewhere
in the range of 200,000 desertions) to the Iraq
War (it’s estimated that about 40,000 troops
from all branches of the U.S. military have
deserted), the numbers tell a chilling story
about the immensity of this rarely discussed
issue – and the realities of war’s impact on
those who serve.
The non-fiction debut from Andy Owen – a
British Army veteran who has completed
operational tours in Northern Ireland, Iraq, and
Afghanistan – All Soldiers Run Away: Alano’s
War, The Story of a British Deserter [Lammi
Publishing, November 1 2017] offers unique
and rare insight into the story of a deserter –
and urgent, thought-provoking analysis of the
broader philosophical, moral, and ethical questions
that surround this controversial subject.
All Soldiers Run Away is centered on WWII-era
British soldier Alan Juniper, and his
experiences in the war’s North African and
Italian Campaigns – which saw him arrested
and thrown in military prison for deserting…
twice.
In an evocative, painstakingly researched narrative,
All Soldiers Run Away takes readers
through Juniper’s life and experiences as a soldier
in war-torn North Africa and central Italy,
relying on archived documents, rediscovered
diaries, and testimony from Juniper’s family –
who only became aware of the scale of Alan’s
story sixty years after the fact, when the onset
of Alzheimer’s made his previously undiagnosed
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder more
acute.
Through the story of Alan Juniper and contrasting
desertions from the same war and
more recent conflicts, All Soldiers Run Away
looks at some of the reasons soldiers desert –
and how we do, and should, respond to their
desertion. As the book progresses, Owen also
weaves his own experience of battle into the
narrative, resulting in what University of Oxford
Professor of Political Philosophy Cécile Fabre
calls “a challenging and, at times, profoundly
moving book.”
“Before being faced with the outline of Alan’s
story, I made an assumption that there was
something inherently unethical in the act of
desertion itself,” says Owen. “But clearly, like
other moral and legal offenses, context is
important.
“My initial negative response was shaped by
the context I know,” he continues. “I served
in a volunteer army with modern logistic support,
with limited operation tour dates.
Understanding the context around Alan’s
desertion forced me to challenge some of my
beliefs about how a soldier should be and why
I thought the way I thought.”
A timely and provocative read that raises larger
questions about what we owe the
societies we are part of, All Soldiers Run Away
reveals:
• The true scale of the horrors soldiers had to
endure in WWII, and our fading recognition
and remembrance for those impacted
• The intrinsic link between duties and rights
• The moral, philosophical, and ethical dilemmas
that desertion poses, and why it continues
to be such a controversial and rarely discussed
reality of war
• The two types of hero: one more obvious
and widely regaled than the other
• The circumstances in which all soldiers run
away
About the Author:
Andy Owen served in the Intelligence Corps of
the British Army reaching the rank of
Captain. He completed operational tours in
Northern Ireland (2003), Iraq (2004 and 2005)
and in Helmand Province, Afghanistan (2007).
All Soldiers Run Away is his third book
following the novels East of Coker (2016) published
by the War Writer’s Campaign and
Invective (2014).
Connect with Andy Owen on Twitter.
All Soldiers Run Away: Alano’s War, The Story
of a British Deserter is currently available
for pre-order via Lammi Publishing, and will be
available in paperback and e-book
editions wherever books are sold as of
November 1, 2017.
Advance review copies of All Soldiers Run
Away are available on request.
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