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After you have been gone 24 hours, then you can be officially listed as AWOL. Up until 23:59, you are simply failing to be at your appointed place of duty. Both are Article 86, UCMJ offenses. You cannot be listed as a deserter until you have been missing for 30 consecutive days. On day 31, the unit then drops you from the unit rolls as a deserter. You have to be carried on what we used to call "the Morning Report" many, many years ago, then the new thing came into being, SIDPERS. I don't know what they call it now, as I have been retired for 14 years now (March 1, 1992). But, I assume it is still the same 30-days and dropped from the rolls. The unit cannot replace you until you are dropped. So, for those 30 days, they cannot even request a replacement for the missing person.

Once you are gone 30-days and listed as a deserter, you can be arrested by any law enforcement agency for desertion and returned to military control Normally, most of these people were punished by Article 15, UCMJ, non-judicial punishment, stripped of rank, fined, and then put under some type of Administrative Chapter for getting rid of them and getting them out of the military.

It is usually some type of personal, financial, or failure to adapt problem, rather than what the leftist press wants you to believe that they ran off for anti-war crap. Now, some may have ran off simply because maybe they had been deployed over to Iraq once, twice, etc., and just were not going again. It was not because they were anti-war, but rather they were anti-having to go overseas and serve again, without girl friend or mama to baby sit their sorry asses.