Still, I have never heard of a person who has been a deserter for years receiving back pay. If that were the case, a person who deserted years ago could show up at a base one day and demand a few hundred thousand in back pay. If Bergdahl did receive back pay, it was a political decision, and not a general rule applied to deserters uniformly.
Once again...he’s NOT YET A DESERTER. He was not classed as a deserter or AWOL, he was classed as “captured” or some such. We don’t send good soldiers after deserters in wartime. Whether he did in fact desert will be determined either by a general court martial panel or by his own guilty plea.