Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military)

by Gordon Corrigan

  266

  Murder

  37

  Striking or using violence to a superior

  6

  Disobedience to a lawful command

  5

  Sleeping at post

  2

  Quitting a post without authority

  7

  Casting away arms

  2

  Criticism of British military executions in the Great War has grown more vociferous over the years. It emanates from those who are opposed to the death penalty under any circumstances, and from those who believe that trials were conducted hastily, without legally qualified supervision and without the accused being given an opportunity to defend himself. It is also alleged that many of those executed were suffering from medical or mental conditions which were ignored, and which, if taken into consideration, would have led to a commutation of sentence.

  To those who oppose the death penalty per se, one can only reply that it was allowed by the law as it stood at the time. The thirty-seven murderers executed by the military would have suffered death by hanging had they been brought before a civilian court in England. While the death penalty is no longer on the statute books of most western democracies, there is an argument for its retention in war. In the future it may never have to be applied, but should the British army ever again have to expand far beyond its peacetime strength by the addition of conscripts and men to whom the military life does not come naturally, then an ultimate sanction to ensure good behaviour may be needed. The army asks a man to risk life and limb in the furtherance of operational tasks. If he refuses to carry out those tasks, or runs away, then he will be punished. ‘Go forward and there is a risk of death; run away and there is a certainty of death’ is persuasive. If, on the other hand, the punishment for failing to go forward is a term in prison with a good chance of an amnesty when the war is over, the imperative is somewhat lessened.

  Although 337 of the 346 executions carried out were ordered by Field General Courts Martial, this is not to say that the proceedings were in any way summary or that justice was skimped. Justice in the middle of a war has to be swift, but it does not have to be unfair. In each and every case the accused was offered the services of a defending officer (known to the military as a ‘prisoner’s friend’), usually of the accused’s choice. A criticism often levelled is that some of the accused were ‘not defended’, when in fact they had elected to defend themselves, as they were fully entitled to do, rather than speak through a representative. It is said that a lawyer who defends himself has a fool as a client, and that may be true in civilian law where cases are decided on the small print of strict legality; but it was not the case in a military court, where the men trying the case were well aware of the circumstances prevailing, and could, and did, themselves question witnesses should the accused miss a vital point. A sentence of death had to be unanimous, with the junior member tendering his opinion first, and there was thorough, albeit speedy, review all the way up the chain of command. By the time a death sentence arrived on the desk of Sir John French or Sir Douglas Haig, or their counterparts in other theatres, unit, brigade, division, corps and army commanders had all commented in writing on the appropriateness of the sentence. The Commander-in-Chief had to take into account not only the views of the accused’s superiors but also the prevailing conditions. He was entitled – indeed he was required – to consider the unit’s state of discipline at the time and whether or not the offence was prevalent.

  Military justice is not only punitive, it is exemplary. All death sentences for sleeping on sentry – 393 of them in all theatres – were quashed, commuted or reduced to terms of imprisonment or field punishment, until two men, private soldiers of the 6th Battalion the South Lancashire Regiment, were executed in February 1917 in Mesopotamia. These were the only executions during the war for this offence. Privates Burton and Downing were a pair of sentries, and were required to remain standing up on the fire-step so that they could watch over the top of the parapet of their trench for enemy approach. What probably did for them was that they were found asleep together and sitting down in the bottom of the trench, so that they were presumed to have made a deliberate decision to chance their luck and go to sleep.10 No doubt the Commander-in-Chief in Mesopotamia, Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Maude, felt that there had been far too much sleeping on sentry and that an example had to be made. The show of force may have worked, as up to that date eighteen death sentences for sleeping on sentry had been handed down in Mesopotamia, none of which were carried out, whereas after it (with a much larger army in theatre) only six were passed, again none of them being carried out.11

  In most cases the officers sitting on a Field General Court Martial had to make a simple decision of fact, based on the evidence. A man was either at his post or he was not; a man had either run away or he had not. If it was felt that there could be any argument over legal niceties then a legally qualified officer was appointed to sit on the court, and in any case the Judge Advocate General at GHQ examined all the papers when they arrived for the Commander-in-Chief’s decision. As the war went on, more and more legally qualified officers became involved, and a Courts Martial Officer was established at the headquarters of each corps to oversee procedures. From early 1915 onwards accused persons were not permitted to plead guilty to a charge that could attract the death penalty – the case had to be heard in full and proved.

  ‘Shell shock’ is frequently cited today in exculpation of many of those who were executed. Medical men had known for many years that the stress of battle could induce neuroses in soldiers, although the British had paid less attention to psychiatric medicine than had some European armies, perhaps because battle-induced trauma was more likely, or at least more numerous, in large conscript armies than in small professional ones. There were cases of psychological breakdown in the British army during the South African War, and these were generally classified as ‘insanes’ and evacuated like any other casualty. By and large, very little was done to examine the causes of such trauma, or to cure it, and cases which did not recover by themselves were generally discharged. In 1914 the term ‘shell shock’, coined by Dr Charles Myers, one of the first neurologists to work with military casualties, came into use to describe battle-induced psychological trauma. On first encountering trauma cases in 1914, when working in a British hospital in France, Myers thought that they were caused by the explosion of a shell in close proximity to the man, damaging the membranes of the brain. Hence the observed symptoms could be explained by a physical cause. Officers of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and medical men generally, objected to this term very early on and frequently thereafter, on the grounds that the symptoms of hypersensitivity to stimuli, startle reactions, irritability, tiredness, lack of concentration, exaggerated fear (phobias), disorientation, disassociation, sleeping disorders and incoherence were psychological rather than physical in origin. Myers himself changed his view as more and more cases appeared where a shell was not a contributory factor, but by 1915 the term had passed into the language.

  ‘Shell shock’ – nearly always placed in inverted commas by medical men to indicate their disapproval of the term as misleading – is simply stress induced by combat, and ‘combat stress’ is a far more accurate description than ‘battle fatigue’ or the modern ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’.12 It is not an illness confined to those exposed to battle, but was and is found in civilian practice, though the content of the phobias (in soldiers the fear of being buried alive was common) may be different.

  It is now accepted by many medical authorities that even witnessing a traumatic event – such as a natural or man-made disaster, or a violent death – can induce psychological stress in suggestible people, something that the compensation industry has not been slow in grasping. Things were rather different in the early years of the last century, and the idea that the headmaster of a school should have to be sent on sick leave and given psychiatric counselling because one of his pupils was drowned in an accid
ent hundreds of miles away, as happened in England in July 2001, would have appeared ridiculous to soldiers of 1914–18, who might have asked questions about the responsibility of the headmaster to the children who had not been drowned.

  Persons suffering from psychological stress are not always responsible for their actions. The British army in the First War recognised this, and accepted that battle casualties included what they termed ‘neurasthenic’ cases. The difficulty, as with gas injuries, was that ‘shell shock’ was easier to fake than a physical wound, and was a defence often seized upon by offenders with no other excuse for their behaviour. A War Office inquiry after the war pointed out that ‘To the relatives of a soldier who had broken down mentally, or who by reason of an inherently timorous disposition could not face the military life, or where natural tendencies had led to his getting into trouble; the use of the term “shell shock” came as a great relief’. It is unfortunate that some campaigners have managed to convince the public that anyone punished for a military offence in time of war must have been suffering from ‘shell shock’, and was therefore not responsible for his actions, when this is palpably untrue.

  A diagnosis of ‘shell shock’ was not a disgrace, but a war injury like any other.13 The history of a New Army Royal Engineers company being raised in Nuneaton in 1915 describes its NCOs as being a company sergeant major who was a recalled reservist, and a Corporal Seymour, ‘stout and amiable’ and ‘a bit of lad’, who had ‘been in France in 1914 but was sent home with “shell shock”’. There is no inkling of disapproval or criticism.14 Erratic or even unlawful behaviour that was diagnosed as being due to ‘shell shock’ was dealt with by sending the man to a rear area where he could recover, or in really bad cases to training or administrative units at home, or to a hospital where he could be treated. If ‘shell shock’ was cited as a defence at a court martial the doctors were asked to pronounce, and in no case was a soldier whom the medical staff certified as suffering from ‘shell shock’ executed. On occasions when ‘shell shock’ was alleged but not supported by the doctors it was not, of course, accepted as a defence. That said, there appear to have been very few cases where men who alleged ‘shell shock’, but whose claim was denied, were actually executed.

  In 1920 the government set up the ‘Southborough Committee’, or more properly ‘The War Office Committee of Enquiry into the Causation and Prevention of Shell Shock’.15 The Chairman was Lord Southborough and the members were eleven medical practitioners with experience of wartime casualties, two MPs and the ex-Deputy Judge Advocate General of the BEF in France. The committee heard evidence from historians, from combatant officers, including at least one who had himself suffered from ‘shell shock’, from lawyers and from civilian and military doctors. The committee’s report began by demanding that the term ‘shell shock’ should be expunged from the language as a ‘gross misnomer’ (sadly, it has not been). The report accepted that ‘shell shock’ was a genuine affliction, but felt that it should be regarded as a sickness rather than as a battle casualty, and concluded that battle-induced traumas were no different in medical terms from those encountered in civilian life. The report explained that there appeared to be certain indicators of susceptibility to ‘shell shock’, and these included a family history of mental illness, low intelligence and high suggestibility. Recruits should be screened for these factors which, said the report, should be grounds for rejection. The report emphasised that in a unit where morale was high – one that was well motivated, well led, and well disciplined – cases of ‘shell shock’ had been considerably fewer than in units where these happy circumstances did not apply.

  The committee also examined court-martial procedure, and were satisfied that from as early as autumn 1914 military legal and medical authorities examined very carefully any allegations that ‘shell shock’ had been a contributory factor to the offence alleged. In such cases the committee was satisfied ‘that the best possible medical advice was called for’. Members devoted considerable time to a definition of cowardice, and found that while all men might feel, or even show, fear, this only developed into cowardice when the man was capable of controlling his fear but did not do so. It is hard to disagree.

  The committee found that any type of individual could suffer from nervous disorders if exposed to battle conditions for long enough, and one witness (a Royal Air Force medical officer) likened it to a ‘run on the bank’. He felt that everybody had reserves of courage and self-control, and that if a man was not given sufficient time to restock, his ‘current account’ would run out and he would eventually break down. This point is generally accepted in today’s army. Colonel J. F. C. Fuller, then Deputy Director of Staff Duties (Training) at the War Office and a man who had seen much action during the war, felt that ‘shell shock’ could be contagious, and cited an instance where mass panic had set in on the Ancre in 1916 when British troops had fled en masse, and another (unique) case where numbers of soldiers had deserted to the Germans in November 1917. The Director General of Army Medical Services, Lieutenant General Sir James Goodwin, accepted the difficulty of identifying potential cases during the enlistment process, but felt that ‘gradual, sympathetic, efficient and thorough training’ could lessen or prevent incidences of ‘shell shock’. Men who had experienced but a short and rushed period of training were, Goodwin believed, more likely to break down. Many witnesses were adamant that regular changes of environment, regular periods of rest and recreation and not being left in the same sector of front for too long would all contribute to a good state of mental health. It was generally agreed that nobody liked the Ypres salient, where instances of ‘shell shock’ were greater than elsewhere, and that ‘lonely’ jobs (manning an observation post in a sap going out into no man’s land or patrolling in very small groups) increased the risks. On the matter of officers who had suffered from ‘shell shock’, a number of witnesses, including Sir Frederick Horne, who had started the war as a brigade commander and finished it as a full general commanding an army, told the committee that having responsibility generally protected officers from mental trauma, but that when that responsibility was removed (during periods of rest or while in billets), or if they were promoted beyond their capabilities, then officers were vulnerable.

  The committee found, inter alia, that anyone could suffer from ‘shell shock’ in time, and that certain individuals were unlikely ever to become efficient fighting soldiers. The committee recognised the importance of training being gradual, and found that in many cases warning signs were indulgence in too much alcohol, drugs or sex. They also found that a previous incidence of concussion – not necessarily experienced in the war – could be a contributory factor. The committee did not agree with one witness who said that men from an outdoor civilian occupation were less susceptible than ‘artisans and clerks’ – the statistics showed that previous employment was no pointer to resistance to trauma. The report made a number of recommendations for reducing the incidence of ‘shell shock’, and for its treatment. These included regular rotation of troops through the front lines (which had been the norm throughout the war), and transfers to different sectors of the front. All soldiers should be given instruction in fear, which all would encounter on active service, and officers should be trained in character assessment. The importance of welfare, good food and comfort was stressed, and men showing signs of ‘shell shock’ should be removed from the front lines at the earliest opportunity and treated behind the lines. There were many examples where timely action had ensured that men could continue to perform useful service if treatment was carried out promptly. The committee recognised the difficulty of identifying, at the moment of enlistment, those susceptible to mental trauma, but felt that if they could in some way be detected they could still be employed in a military capacity behind the lines and away from the fighting.

  Modern psychiatrists would agree with most of what the Southborough Committee said, although Brigadier Douglas Wickenden, Consultant Psychiatrist to the British Army, has pointe
d out to this author that the feeling of helplessness, of inability to control what is going on, is a major factor in breakdown under stress, and that it can occur even when the patient is no more than a witness of a traumatic event that may not affect him or her physically. This would support the finding that officers and NCOs, who had at least some sense of being in control, were less likely to suffer from ‘shell shock’ than private soldiers who simply obeyed orders and went where they were led. Combat stress is now accepted as a combination of acute and chronic or repeated stresses, from which there is no acceptable voluntary escape except through some form of breakdown. In a mass army of millions of men, that so few did in fact break down during the Great War says much for the inherent resilience of the men, for the leadership and training they were given and for the progress made during the war towards a proper understanding of mental illness.

  It is clear from the voluminous evidence gathered by the Southborough Committee that, even in the state of psychological knowledge and psychiatric medicine at the time, men who succumbed to ‘shell shock’ were recognised and treated as medical cases and not as criminals. Some of the treatment was, of course, experimental, and some was barbaric by modern standards, but by the latter stages of the war the importance of speedy removal from the battle area and sympathetic treatment behind the lines was recognised. Today ‘shell shock’ has not gone away but, in the modern British army at least, it is recognised, and training and medical practice takes its existence into account. A soldier in the Falklands War who deserted in the face of the enemy, and whose actions could have led to a court martial for what was still a capital offence in military law, was on medical examination found to be suffering from battle-induced trauma and treated as a casualty rather than as an offender. In the last few years soldiers have committed suicide in Northern Ireland and in the Balkans, almost certainly as a result of what used to be called ‘shell shock’. The problems are still with us, and there are too few psychiatrists and it is too expensive to screen every potential recruit; but careful and thorough training, as recommended by Southborough, has ensured that cases are few. Suggestions that ‘shell shock’ victims were executed during the Great War are not supported by the evidence.