On February 25, 1915, the Ottoman War minister Enver Pasha sent an order to all military units that Armenians in the active Ottoman forces be demobilized and assigned to the Labour battalion. Enver ordered that all Armenians in the Ottoman forces, some as old as sixty,[citation needed] to be disarmed, demobilized and assigned to labour battalion units. The Ottoman Army had high rate of desertion, and the number of Armenian deserters appears to have been especially large. Enver claimed Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman Army joined Armenian guerrilla bands or went over to the Armenian volunteer units in the Russian Army.[citation needed]