Freebooters.

This is coolbert:

"A soldier who has decided to soldier no more, who prefers not to desert to the enemy and who can find somewhere to hide may, therefore sometimes manage to sit out the fighting, if it remains static, for  considerable periods. The wastes of the 'old Somme battlefield', pitted with dug-outs and stretches over many square miles, were during 1917 colonized by a freebooting gang of Australians, who lived by raiding military dumps and eluded the sear of the military police for many months, some say until the end of the war." - - Sir John Keegan,  "The Face of Battle"

"freebooter - - noun: PIRATE, PLUNDERER"

Consider once more the topic of the military deserter in this particular instance a troop who abandons his unit but not the battlefield. Thanks to the Internet website "War History Online" and the article by Jerome Baldwin.

"Living In No Man’s Land: The Legend of the Wild Deserters of the First World War"

"Ever since the Great War the legend of the wild deserters has endured.  There are varying stories about them, but the core of the tale is this: a group of deserters from different and opposing armies – British, Australian, Canadian, Italian, French, German and Austrian – banded together and lived in underground caverns and dugouts in the midst of the shell-blasted desolation in certain sectors of the front.  Emerging at night, they took rations, weapons, boots – anything they needed – off of the dead or dying.  Like something out of a horror movie, some have said they also resorted to cannibalism, feeding off the plentiful supply of dead flesh between the lines."

Morlocks of H.G.Wells but World War One style??

Apocrypha [something the authenticity of which cannot be confirmed or denied] of this sort from the era of the Great War deemed as "legend".

PROBABLY MORE THAN LEGEND! SOUNDS REASONABLE THAT SUCH A THING COULD HAVE OCCURRED. I GUESS THE QUESTION WOULD BE MORE AS TO HOW PREVALENT SUCH ACTIVITY WAS AND HOW GREAT WERE THE NUMBERS OF DESERTERS INVOLVED.

Rogues and rascals hardly can such deserters be described!!

coolbert.