In the years of the First World War, there was strong support for the death penalty across all elements of society, and so it is no surprise that it not only existed but was enforced in the military. Those serving on the Western Front and the other theatres of the First World War knew the consequences of committing offences under military law, and undoubtedly a number would have supported the use of the death penalty. Many, though, sympathised with the condemned men because they understood what they had been through, as well as their personal circumstances, far better than those who had recommended and confirmed the death sentence. I would contend, however, that despite the standards and practices of the times, the death penalty for those serving in the military and committing offences that had no parallel in civilian life, was both wrong-headed and illogical – and those involved in its administration should have realised that was the case.
Army discipline comes from training, and then more training, backed up by a set of rules enshrined in military law, ignorance of which, as in civilian law, does not form an acceptable defence. The British Army supported the death penalty because it argued that it needed it to maintain discipline and keep an army in the field, but as Lieutenant-Colonel Meyler, who later became MP for Blackpool, said, ‘You train your soldiers not to be impressed by fear, to despise fear, and then you go and bring out … this death sentence which is supposed to improve their discipline by means of fear. The whole thing is illogical.’
Ernest Thurtle also shared Meyler’s view when he wrote that the War Office, in the last resort, had defended the death penalty on the grounds of military necessity. He interpreted this as demonstrating that it was only the threat of being shot by men of their own side that kept the British soldier fighting, despite the fact that, as he pointed out, the death penalty had not applied to the Australian soldiers. He concluded with the following words:
no democracy has the right to shoot any man in cold blood, volunteer or conscript, because he is unable to withstand the horrors of modern war. If war cannot be waged without the death penalty, and we take the penalty away, much the worse for the people who make wars but take good care not to fight in them.
The fact that no Australian soldier was executed in the First World War, despite pressure from Sir Douglas Haig for them to adopt the death penalty, is for me the centrepiece of the case for the illogicality of the British Army’s approach to capital offences in the military. I say illogical because there is absolutely no evidence that the performance and discipline of the Australian soldiers was undermined because the Australian military did not have the death penalty as a means of ensuring conformity and control. I find it hard to believe that no Australian soldier ever fell asleep on guard duty or committed the other offences that would have meant a death sentence for their British counterparts, and you would be a brave person to argue that they were less effective as a result.
Support for the death penalty is based on the principles of punishment and deterrence, but in the British Army, with the exception of murder and treason, the capital offences did not have an equivalent in the civilian world. If you are prepared to accept that the British Army in the midst of the First World War needed not only to have, but also to impose, the death sentence, then the assumption would be that the execution would not only punish the individual but also act as a deterrent to others. It is the deterrent aspect that can be the only justification for those public military executions that took place, demonstrating to the men in the battalions and regiments concerned what they could expect if they decided to, for example, desert. From the evidence I have been able to gather it seems that the deterrence aspect was just not apparent in many of the executions, to the point where soldiers simply stopped believing that they happened. In addition, if the death sentence was such a deterrent, then why had some of those who were eventually executed deserted a number of times?
Even allowing for the procedures of the times, the way that decisions leading to the confirmation of a death sentence were made was not just wrong-headed but, in fact, plain wrong. This view is based on the fact that military law was changed in September 1914 to allow for the decision of a field court martial to be enacted quickly; the condemned man’s right to an appeal was also taken away.
After the First World War, the British Army and its supporters made much of the fact that only 10 per cent of those sentenced to death were actually executed, but behind that figure there exists a real cause for concern. In civilian life, for example, which after all existed in parallel with military life during the First World War and only a few miles distant from it, if a murder was committed, the perpetrator would be arrested and taken before a court and, if subsequently found guilty, would be sentenced to death by the judge in that court. The law allowed for an appeal process and once that was exhausted the sentence would be carried out. In the British Army, however, things were done somewhat differently: once a soldier had been found guilty of a capital offence, he would not be told the sentence but would have to wait while his case passed up through the decision-making tree. It would appear that confirmation of the sentence depended on the man’s senior officers and ultimately the commander-in-chief taking a view as to whether an example needed to be made, based on the perceived discipline and or performance of the individual’s battalion or regiment. So once again, even allowing for the practices of the times, this cannot have been right if the sentence was being determined not by the offence itself, but for reasons unconnected to the offence. Was it right that the decision concerning a man’s life could hinge on the perceived discipline and performance of those he served with?
The only explanation for the denial of an appeal for those soldiers condemned to death has to be the needs of the exigencies of the service, as perceived by the military hierarchy. If the condemned man had a right of appeal then very few men would have chosen not to exercise it, which would have placed a burden on the system. I suspect also that there was a strong desire to keep matters in-house where they could be contained, because an appeal process could have led to appeals being considered by those from a non-military background who may have questioned the courts martial process, the lack of evidence, the lack of qualified legal representation and the reasons why a sentence had been confirmed.
Once the sentence had been confirmed then the execution would take place within a matter of hours or, in some cases, minutes, giving the individual concerned little time to prepare or, even if they were able, to draw attention to their plight.
In the early years of the twentieth century, Britain was a society with distinct social classes, yet even accepting that was the custom of the time, it is indefensible that class played such a prominent role in the British Army’s enforcement of discipline. As was the case with the Australians, it is hard to believe that British Army officers did not commit any capital offences – of course they did, but they were just dealt with differently.
It is hard to understand how it could be the case that only three officers were executed in the First World War, with one of those being for murder. In 1916, Sir Douglas Haig wrote that desertion by an officer should be treated more severely than with the other ranks, but his wish changed nothing. Under-performing officers were taken out of the front line and either sent back to Britain or placed in roles behind the lines. On the rare occasions that an officer was charged and found guilty, they were more likely to be cashiered or demoted. Unlike their men, officers could and did appeal, and many were pardoned and restored to their rank by King George V in the years after the war had ended. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, the opponents of pardons for those executed were not keen to accept this as a reason for pardons to be granted, albeit posthumously, to the other ranks.
There is also evidence that the private soldier was viewed by some officers as virtually worthless. This is not a re-run of the ‘lions led by donkeys’ debate, but if a condemned man was viewed in that way then it is not a huge leap to a position where he is viewed as expendable. For me, the issue of class is one of the more u
ncomfortable aspects of the British Army’s adherence to the death penalty because, unlike civilian law, it did not apply to all men equally. The case of Private James Crozier is a blatant example of this, as is the part played by Major (later Brigadier) Crozier. Major Crozier was faced with two men who had deserted, one being an officer and the other a young private soldier, and he was dismayed that those above him decided that no further action was to be taken against the officer. However, despite the glaring unfairness involved, he did not hesitate to recommend that Private Crozier should be executed.
Sir Douglas Haig’s mantra, ‘truth could be abandoned in the cause of the war effort’, leads to another area of concern: namely, the lack of transparency on the part of the military hierarchy and the politicians. It was the army’s procedure up until 1917 for its Records Office bluntly to inform families that their family member had been sentenced to death and that this sentence had been carried out, resulting in the forfeiture of all rights to campaign medals and benefits, which had the effect of leaving many families destitute. The Army Records Office could only send such letters if it was informed that a sentence had been carried out and yet, up until 1917, some commanding officers included those executed in the lists of men killed in action. This situation ended in 1917, much to the army’s dismay, when the government decided in November of that year that the families of those executed were to be informed that their loved ones had died on active service. This had been an informal procedure on the part of some commanding officers, though it is impossible to say with any confidence whether such officers were motivated by concerns for the men’s families or a desire, for whatever reason, to keep things quiet, thereby protecting themselves and ultimately the army.
In the early years of the First World War, the government itself was reluctant to admit that executions were taking place, or the numbers involved. It could be argued, therefore, that the government and the military hierarchy’s behaviour seemed to be bordering on embarrassment about what was happening. I believe that, certainly up until 1916 when conscription was brought in, one of their concerns would have been the possible impact on recruitment if the facts became known. The government could not afford to take the British people for granted and risk alienating them, which might have been the result if the scale of the executions had become known.
Neither the military hierarchy nor the government did much to dispel the feeling that they had something to hide even when the war ended. Families, politicians and other interested parties were prevented from gaining access to the courts martial papers on the basis that only defendants could request these, and as they had been shot no one else had a right to them. Furthermore, the papers relating to those executed were initially embargoed for 100 years. The army also engaged in ‘weeding out’ – which today would be referred to as redacting – what it considered to be sensitive documents from battalion and regimental diaries and routine orders, in what it admitted was an attempt to ‘thwart the inquisitive’.
One hundred years later it is still possible to find examples where the inquisitive are being thwarted. On Wednesday 9 April 2014, under the headline ‘MoD tries to block its own book on Helmand’, The Times reported that the Ministry of Defence was attempting to block a highly critical study of British and American ‘naivety’ in the Helmand district of Afghanistan. The author claimed that the ‘MoD was more interested in protecting its reputation than learning from a conflict that has cost 448 British lives’. If the words ‘learning from a conflict’ and ‘448 British lives’ are replaced by ‘learning from practice’ and ‘302 British and Commonwealth lives’, then it could just as easily be a piece about British Army executions on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918. To progress, there is a need to be reflective, posing questions to gain understanding that can then change future practice – something which those in Whitehall seem reluctant to do, and therefore nothing changes.
In 1919 the army had shown that it was aware of the public mood and the likely consequences for its ability to retain the death penalty, as evidenced in the extract from the Darling Committee Report included in Chapter 8:
Even during the continuance of hostilities there was very strong feeling both in the country and in the House of Commons against the infliction of the death penalty for military offences. Now that hostilities have ceased it can confidently be stated that the effect on this country of a death penalty might lead to an agitation which might be difficult to control and in all probability would jeopardise the prospects of maintaining the death penalty for military offences in time of peace when the Annual Army (Act) comes before the Houses of Parliament.
Despite this, the army still maintained its support for the death penalty, although it proved to be a losing battle. In stages, from 1928 to 1930 and then finally in 1998, it was eventually abolished. Abolition was not to be the end of matters because there was then the Shot at Dawn campaign that sought pardons for those executed, with the exception of those sentenced for murder or treason. This campaign was opposed by some who could see no purpose, for a variety of reasons, in the granting of general pardons, but their position was somewhat undermined by the fact that officers had been pardoned by King George V, so a precedent had been established. Eventually, in 2006, the campaign achieved its purpose. I believe that those who played a part in the campaign to get those executed pardoned deserve to be recognised, because they took on the establishment and succeeded.
To say that I have enjoyed this research would be wrong, given the subject matter, but I have found it extremely interesting and at times my response to what I have read and discovered has been one of anger, sadness and frustration. In writing this book, I have deliberately chosen to look at matters post-sentence, which means that I have not written about the back stories of those condemned – their offences, their personal circumstances at the time, or the courts martial process – unless some context was required.
I am sure that the majority of people reading this book will have experienced a similar range of feelings by the time they have reached the end. This is not the most glorious chapter in the history of the British Army and the War Office/Ministry of Defence. In terms of transparency and the control of information it seems that the lessons of the past have not been learnt, but at least now the immediacy and variety of news coverage ensures that the public is better informed, despite the best efforts of the generals and the Whitehall ‘machine’.
In all probability, my book and its analysis will infuriate some, who, as a result, will argue that, coming from a non-military background, how could I possibly understand the pressures on those army officers who were charged with fighting a war that was unlike any that had gone before. My answer would have to be: of course they are right in terms of my background, but I would make the point that I did not have any preconceived ideas when I started the research for this book and my analysis is based solely on what I have read and discovered. In any event, my book was written to inform a wider audience who, if sufficiently interested, will then engage in some wider reading around the subject and form their own opinion, and maybe answer for themselves some of the questions my research and analysis has posed.
And if research does raise more questions than it answers then let me pose a final, if possibly inconvenient, question. Babington in his statistical breakdown of those executed gave a figure of thirty-one soldiers executed on the Western Front for murder. Those executed for murder were never included in the campaign for pardons because murder was an offence punishable by death in both the military and civilian worlds, which leads to my final question. How certain can we be, given the inadequacies of the courts martial process, that those charged with murder were properly investigated, tried and sentenced?
Finally, I think my research has given me an understanding of why David Lewis feels that there is still unfinished business where British Army executions in the First World War are concerned.
The Old Brown Teapot
by A.R. (David) Lewis
Standing in
a Flanders Trench, the young soldier
peered into the gloom, as he waited for stand down,
which would signal the dawn, and rest from duty.
His mind turned to thoughts of home.
Sounds of shells, gunfire, war,
blotted out by warm caressing visions,
of a kitchen, glowing in lamp light.
His mother busy preparing tea.
The Old Brown Teapot, warming on the hob.
His thoughts turned to dreams,
and he fell asleep at his post.
To be awakened by shaking and shouting,
the Sergeant and Officer demanding explanations.
Inevitably the Court Martial followed.
The verdict as expected ‘Guilty’,
punishment death by firing squad.
They pinned a white patch on his chest,
tied him to a chair, then read out the charge.
He did not hear it, his mind was fixed on the Old Brown Teapot.
In the little cottage, the fire had gone out,
his mother paused, shivered as she rekindled the fire.
Executed at Dawn Page 16
