Slain at Ieper
Julian Putkowski
During the period of the Great War, families’ were usually emotionally traumatised and unable to discover details about the military trials that sentenced their men to death. Additionally, wartime press censorship successfully limited public knowledge about the executions. When individual Members of Parliament complained, or the local and national press tried to publicise matters, the government and military closed-ranks and revealed as little as possible.
Even after the war, when the death sentence was abolished for all offences except murder and mutiny, official secrecy was rigidly maintained. The intended consequence was to suspend and delay independent scrutiny of individual cases for three-quarters of a century.
In 1983, Judge Anthony Babington published a book that criticised the judicial procedures. Eventually, the men’s names were published in 1989. More important, the court martial dossiers began to be declassified in 1993.
For the first time the horror of army justice was revealed. The men’s surviving relatives became very angry about the unjust way their men had been treated and began demanding posthumous pardons. Their demand has also been the policy of the Royal British Legion since 1985 and is today supported by the Veterans of the Great War; almost 50% of MPs; the Scottish Regional Assembly and 30% of local authorities. This represents millions of voters throughout the nation. But the British government doggedly continues to maintain that the dead men had been treated justly. Presently, in an entirely separate and unexpected move, the New Zealand Government are about to grant pardons to their five sons who were shot at dawn.
At least half of the 306 men executed for military offences by the British Army during the First World War served in what was called the "Ypres Salient" but of those who were court-martialled and executed, I wish to tell the stories of only three.
Their experiences draw attention to issues that deserve to be more openly acknowledged by the British Government, military historians and especially those authors who write much of the literature sold to those who visit the battlefields and cemeteries in the Westhoek and on the Western Front.
Much has been written about shell shock and trauma associated with the fighting and it is maintained that medical knowledge was incomplete. While it is true that psychological remedies were inadequate, soldiers have always known about the physical effects of battle stress and John Major, when Prime Minister, claimed that when it was available, expert medical testimony quashed the majority of death sentences.
Yet, as the stories of Private's Nelson, Gore and McColl demonstrate, courts martial did not regard stress, whether from battle or personal problems, brutality or bullying, as a mitigating factor and that medical appraisal of defendants was either minimal or non-existent.
The enforcement of discipline and ritual humiliation of the accused and the exercise of class prejudice, are key to understanding the manner in which the courts-martial system operated.
This was codified in the Manual of Military Law, which permitted officers from the defendant’s own unit to take part in a disciplinary triage which generally took about twenty minutes to find ninety percent of defendants guilty as charged.
This activity was made easier by the fact that the majority of the accused were ill educated, inarticulate and inexperienced in self-advocacy and invariably under great stress. Before 1918 most soldiers were unassisted by a defending officer – even when a defendant’s previous disciplinary record made it more likely that a death sentence would be confirmed. Immaturity made little difference, as may be demonstrated by the execution of two 17-year olds, Private Herbert Morris in Poperinge and Private Herbert Burden at Dikkebus.
Few, if any of the men court martialled in the Salient were able to summon witnesses in their own defence; some opted to remain silent throughout the proceedings and in one case a soldier effectively committed suicide by pleading guilty.
The presence of legally qualified Courts Martial Officers (CMO) at trials made little difference, for their task was not to defend the accused, but instead to confer an element of rationality via a implementation of disciplinary policy. By ensuring that courts martial were systematic and consistent in carrying out the legal ritual, CMO also served as a reminder to officers of their and responsibilities.
The sometimes bigoted opinions of confirming officers were invariably critical, even when unsupported by evidence. There was no way in which a condemned man could challenge their fatal prejudices.
The story of Gunner Casey demonstrates that occasionally deserters benefited from the good humour of a senior commander. More commonly, confirming officers demonstrated their lack of compassion and understanding, by repeating the junior officers and NCO’s gossip to justify death sentences.
Imprisonment and the provision of drink, drugs or divine comfort on the eve of their execution completed the degradation of "worthless men". Ironically, as the execution of Pte. McColl in Ieper Prison demonstrates, the provision of guards, to prevent the doomed man from committing suicide or escaping from confinement, might provide some unanticipated solace, but otherwise the condemned men were wholly isolated, and valued by the army only as grisly propaganda to intimidate the rank-and-file.
In March 1998, The Armed Forces Minister, Dr John Reid ordered Ministry of Defence officials to review all the courts martial cases. On their advice, Dr Reid upheld the established policy of refusing to consider posthumously pardoning men executed for military offences. He conceded that many had been men of bravery and courage, and that their names should be added to books of remembrance and war memorials. He affirmed that, "All those who were executed were themselves victims of war", thereby avoiding criticism of the role of British officers and the institutional exercise of class prejudice.
Class bias is evident in the selection and narrow social composition of the British officer class who monopolised the military-judicial process. The entire military judicial system was staffed and controlled by officers. Even in the minority of cases in which a Prisoner’s Friend defended soldiers, regulations demanded that the latter was a commissioned officer. A public school education or attendance at a university was virtually mandatory, even for "temporary gentlemen" who were granted wartime commissions.
The extent to which the influence of British public schools and consequently the perspectives of a narrow social elite dominated the wartime military hierarchy is exemplified in the roll of honour published by Eton College. The outcome can be seen in official statistics that show the comparatively low percentage of officers who were convicted by courts martial and more clearly in the astonishingly mild punishments inflicted on officers. That three junior officers were executed, including Lieutenant Eric Skeffington Poole at Poperinge, does not invalidate this criticism – for all three were social outsiders. Poole was a Canadian and the other two were respectively a naval officer and a soldier who had been promoted from the ranks.
What was achieved by these killings? If it was to halt the remorseless rise in the number of desertions, then there is little sign it had any demonstrable effect. Did the executions improve morale or at least halt a decline in morale? Not to any statistically discernible extent. Was the practice in any military sense, necessary? That depends on whom you consult. Conservative historians, militarists and officials from the Ministry of Defence (fearing claims for financial compensation?) regularly conjure up justifications for these killings.
But if you ask the grief stricken families what they feel about the matter, then or now, you might be told about the human "collateral damage" which is largely ignored by Britain’s military establishment.
Children, cursed as coward’s and bastards at school; an impoverished woman driven to prostitution in order to feed orphaned children; a young mother and infant daughter evicted from lodgings because the rent had not been paid; an older soldier’s family queuing up to beg for charity. The families have endured years of hardship and emotional torment, sometimes for decades withholding the cause of their bitter grief from brothers and sisters.
The families of soldiers who were never sentenced to death may able to draw a comfort from the unsullied reputations and display campaign medals awarded to those who died an "honourable" death on a battlefield, even if it was really an unreported suicide, alcohol poisoning, drowning in mud, or the outcome of some general’s tactical blunder.
There is no similar comforting cloak of ambiguity about the deaths of the executed men. The contents of the untouched and unaltered written proceedings of their trials provide not only the army’s justification for judicial killing but also an indictment of the values of an imperial ruling class that the British Government regrettably remains unwilling to criticise.
