I've heard stories about this, but it sounds kinda far fetched. The story typically goes that a British soldier gets seperated from their unit in the chaos of combat, either wanders around looking for their unit or waits in place until fellow soldiers arrive, and ends up arrested, charged with desertion, and executed. This seems to be cartoonish in how unreasonable it is, given that getting seperated from one's unit is very common. Yet I hear it all the time. Is there any documented case of it actually happening?
I know of no cases of this happening. Execution overall, but especially in the British army, was exceedingly rare. Here are the facts:
Over 20,000 British soldiers would be found guilty of 'cowardice'/desertion
Approximately 3,000 would be sentenced to death
Only 306 would actually have the punishment follow through
Further
Over 150,000 Germans would be accused of desertion throughout the war.
Only 18 would be executed
Only 24 Americans would be given death penalties for desertion, zero would actually have their punishment carried out.
So no I find it incredibly difficult to believe that this happened on any form of major scale.