Mutinies in France
Julian Putkowski
Of the mutinies that occurred in the British Expeditionary Force in Northern France during the First World War, those that erupted during the latter part of the conflict attracted most attention.
This was due to a number of developments. For instance, consider the recruitment of reluctant conscripts with potentially radical political ideas following the Russian Revolution and the influence of contemporary industrial unrest and general war weariness.
Though important, quantifying their effect on the army is difficult, especially in explaining any mutiny. Nevertheless, the contemporary writings of senior army commanders demonstrate a grave concern bordering on alarm on the prospect of political subversives amongst the ranks.
Is it possible to forge a link between industrial unrest in Britain; revolution in Russia and mutinies in the French and British armies during 1917? As far as the British army is concerned, war weariness is too nebulous a concept and as difficult to substantiate as a crude "Reds in the ranks" thesis.
Yet plausible arguments do support the notion that, if not revolutionary, the wartime mutinies had at least a political dimension. They confronted authority directly and indirectly challenged the wartime civil administration that legitimated the division of power within the army.
Even when manifestations of collective discontent lacked the conventional trappings of political protest, the mutineers' action was no less an exercise in political power. Allowing for strictly functional differences, it is possible to drawn analogies between mutineers and other state sector service workers engaging in an unofficial strike.
Justification for direct action reflected not only a soldiers' frustration and anger but also, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, an immediate demand that officer’s be called to account for their actions or corporate military policy. Typically, this involved a breach of what the soldiers viewed as the officers' responsibility, e.g. to organise adequate accommodation or food and hygiene facilities. In such circumstances, mutineers bargained with the officers in much the same way as employees bargained about contractual obligations with their managers.
Another key bargaining issue, for example, was about a transfer from an elite unit like the Guards to a menial pioneer battalion, or being scheduled for unacceptably dangerous or exhausting spells of combat. This was not simply a matter regimental status, but could also involve parting company with a social network that may have been literally life saving.
Mutiny was also associated with a claim for "fair treatment". This was the nearest most mutineers came to expressing an ideological justification for their action.
A claim for fair treatment could spark off a mutiny, but was not enough to sustain its thrust. Thus, the absence of a common ideology constrained a mutiny as much as the threat of a firing squad.
Why, therefore, did soldiers engage in radical action to achieve what sometimes appears to have been a very limited objective? After all, for individuals who were involved in mutinies, their lives, reputations, career and the welfare of families, dependents and communities were at stake.
Ultimately, the answer lies in the mutineers' estimate of the risks. At best, they could achieve their demands. At worst they could be annihilated. If gunned down and their deaths were concealed from other soldiers and the public by a censor's pen, the mutiny would influence generals and politicians alike. Courts-martial cases involving mutineers, were as much part of the bargaining process as the action which gave rise to the proceedings, and it was the officers and the army, whose behaviour was tested, as much as that of the accused.
In spite of the appalling hardships suffered by troops on active service, it is undeniably true that most who served in the British Army may have grumbled and complained but they never mutinied.
This has been conventionally explained by reference to the men's motivation or the high morale of the rank and file, estimated by a unit's good health and hygiene; disciplinary record; smart appearance; cheerfulness and readiness to sacrifice their lives. Avoiding the obvious problems associated with objectively measuring many of these factors, the absence of mutiny may be more satisfactorily explained by identifying factors that deterred men from mutinying.
For the minority of troops who were disaffected enough to consider usurping their officers' authority, the causes of discontent were many and varied. However, for it to mature into a mutiny, men had to have the opportunity to conspire. While hostilities were in progress, the opportunities to collectively foment mutiny were limited.
To begin with, the process of collective bargaining required an arena or point of assembly, a place or situation in which soldiers could gather to exchange information, air grievances, agree on remedial action and identify representatives. The absence of these opportunities has led some historians to conclude that combat soldiers and others in forward areas were disinclined to mutiny because they were imbued with what higher morale than non-combatants behind the lines. Bourne, for example, refers to," Solidarities and imperatives of 'primary group membership'" as a prophylactic against mutiny.
Aside from relegating the role of ideological commitment, such conclusions overlook the fact that the distinction between combatants and non-combatants was blurred by advances in aerial warfare, which extended the firing zone to include most of Northern France and much of Britain.
It is more apposite to observe that service in the trenches involved material deprivation as well as physical danger and therefore, soldier's expectations of what the army would provide would have been proportionately lowered as they advanced towards front line positions.
Soldiers endured miserable conditions at the front because they expected the experience, even their officers did not expect to dine off mess silver when in the line. Nevertheless, had the rank and file wished to organise collectively at the front they would have been handicapped by the topography of the trenches.
The arrangement of troops in static positions in front line trenches did not improve opportunities for soldiers to develop a dialogue about collective grievances with more than their immediate neighbours. The deployment of infantry in companies occupying several traverses in narrow trenches made verbal communication with men in adjacent positions difficult and dangerous, especially if the enemy was alert.
In any case, soldiers in the line were controlled by routine regular inspections and were under constant surveillance by NCO's. For similar reasons, communication between troops in forward positions with those situated in support trenches was no less difficult to achieve. Ration parties and runners provided an alternative but generally irregular and unreliable conduit for unofficial exchanges of information.
Surreptitious gathering would have been impossible to arrange and the enemy made movement of large parties of men during daylight a hazardous proposition. Even when raids and assaults were not in prospect, the area behind the front was particularly closely monitored and all key routes were policed to prevent troops straggling or deserting.
Though the topography of the trenches made it physically impossible for soldiers to mass or manoeuvre autonomously, it also provided the circumstances and proximity that permitted fraternisation with the enemy. Cease-fires, trench truces and the phenomenon of the "quiet front", as Ashworth and Brown have amply demonstrated, were not restricted to Christmas 1914. Some ceasefires lasted for weeks and were repeated at different times later in the war.
Unlike mutiny, however, the bargaining effectively involved a dialogue with enemy troops rather than British officers. Nevertheless, the persistence of a truce relied on a measure of accommodation by officers in the line and it was they who determined when a ceasefire ended. The Christmas truce of 1914 was certainly disobedience on a grand scale but it was not regarded by those involved as a challenge to officers' authority.
When returned to reserve or rest areas troops were again subjected to a wearisome routine of roll calls, rigorous training, organised leisure and sports and a limited measure of access to rigorously policed civilian establishments. Though these activities were intended to afford some respite and improve the men's combat worthiness, soldiers' mobility remained limited. The close supervision immediately behind the front was also matched by constant movement, which similarly inhibited collective action.
Also contrasting with the dominant image of static front line trenches was the constant movement along the lines of communication. Combat troops moving into and out of forward positions, casualties being evacuated to dressing stations, trains spewing ammunition and supplies and endless files of reinforcements were all hustled along by military police and transport officers. At night, the communication trenches and supply tracks were traversed by a heavy traffic of vehicles, men and animals that sustained the front. Even when not engaged in an offensive, the agencies that controlled the constant of units and men, diminished opportunities for men to gather together.
Aside from punitive sanctions and formal control, it would have been difficult for mutinous conspiracies to be sustained in combat units much beyond a tour of duty in the line.
In some infantry battalions the casualty rates were so heavy that a company's personnel could be eliminated several times in a few months. If fact, total extinction was only avoided by retaining a small cadre in reserve, around whom a unit could be re-constituted with drafts of reinforcements.
Less dramatically, units were scourged by sickness, physical injury and mental trauma sustained in the poisonous filth and detritus of the combat zone. In winter time, cold, damp conditions, exacerbated by wind, made hypothermia no less a deadly enemy than the Germans.
Advancing beyond the lines of communication, soldiers were wholly dependent on the hierarchy of NCOs and officers who monopolised control over the organisation of communication, food supplies and detailed knowledge of a geographical locality. In the final analysis, brute coercion confronted laggardly individuals and collective disobedience, even when engaged in a futile assault. Sometimes the exercise was conducted with a court-martial but on other occasions it was a summary affair. For example, during the assault on Trones Wood in October 1916, a subaltern explained:
"We started to get out as quickly as possible. Looking down the trench at one point they were lagging a bit. I rushed along shouting. One man said he couldn't get out, he was whacked - but he was holding up the others. There was nothing for it. I pointed my revolver and gave him two seconds. He crawled out. All this took a few seconds but they were valuable ones - and if we didn't keep up we were useless. We ran like hell, at least as fast as the mud would allow."
Another officer, witnessing a similar episode during the battle of Festubert, recalled:
"A Company Sergeant Major of the Irish Guards brandishing his revolver towards a few men who were apparently reluctant to go over the parapet. And who could blame them for all along the top of that parapet was concentrated a murderous barrage of machine- gun and shrapnel fire."
On other occasions soldiers were threatened by their officers because they did not remain in the line, typically as a consequence of a German assault. Thus, for example, Private Percy Tweed, 1 Grenadier Guards, recalling the flight of British troops at Gouzeacourt, wrote:
"As we were marching towards the front we came across these demoralised British troops, and our officers tried to stem the rot, but it was hopeless until our officers shot and killed the apparent ringleaders. Then a little order and explanations, as to their (sic) cowardice behaviour was obtained from them. The fact was the Germans had attacked and captured part of our Front Line, in doing so killing the majority of those officers and NCOs, and the remainder had simply bolted."
When officers failed to open fire on retreating troops, they were inhibited by utility rather than sentiment, as one recalled:
"Some men of a Line regiment who appeared on our right started running back. I shouted out to them to halt, but they took no notice. I pulled out my revolver and very nearly shot at them, but thought it wouldn't do any good, as they all had their backs to me, so would have thought that anyone hit was hit by a German. If ran after them, my own men might think that I was running away."
Nor were the men incapable of retaliating. Sometimes soldiers conspired to murder NCOs and officers, but more than anecdotal evidence is usually difficult to obtain. From the Judge Advocate General's registers, it appears that soldiers assaulting NCOs occurred more commonly than attacks on officers. Unsurprisingly, punishment for men found guilty of assaulting a superior always seems to have been exemplary, though only six men were executed for the offence throughout the war.
The gravity with which the offence was viewed may be appreciated by the example of Private J. Fox, 2 Highland Light Infantry, who was executed for kicking a lieutenant's shins following a reprimand for parading with a dirty rifle.
Discipline was strict but less punitive for British and white imperial military personnel who staffed base camps, the so-called "base wallahs". Sometimes stigmatised as "lead swingers" (habitual malingerers) by combat troops, they included labourers, transport staff, specialist technical, medical and administrative staff in stationary hospitals, repair workshops and training camp troops.
The conditions within the base camps afforded greater opportunities for such troops to engage in collective action to improve their lot. Within their perimeter, most large base camps and depots were open and once the day's duties had been discharged, staff were comparatively free to meet in canteens, YMCA institutes, cinemas and theatres.
These predominantly non-combatant troops were relatively static, numerous and could communicate and organise themselves more easily than the men at the front. That they did not feature significantly as mutineers until after the end of the war invites speculation about the reasons why dissent was deferred.
The two most obvious conclusions are that they could be shot for mutiny and a general awareness that their situation was a good deal more tolerable than that experienced by combat troops. The latter perspective informed by direct experience, for many had been injured or wounded earlier in the fighting and were given non-combatant duties because they were physically unfit to serve at the front.
Others, witnessing the passage of tens of thousands of wounded through their midst, needed no reminder of the uncomfortable consequences of being exiled for indiscipline to a less secure situation, closer to the front.
A third, less easily quantifiable deterrent, would have related to the age and marital status of personnel allocated to permanent base duties. Military commanders preferred to use younger, fitter men for combat duties who were statistically less likely to have dependents than older men. Even if the latter included conscripted industrial militants, many had hesitated to mutiny, knowing loss of income, which accompanied military detention, would also entail great financial hardship for their families.
The mutinous potential of military units stationed on the lines of communication, straddling the distance between the base camps and the front, is simply too complex to afford easy generalisation.
This is principally because of their varied size and function. Also, the scope of their work and location sometimes shifted, influenced for example by preparations for a big offensive, enemy bombing or administrative developments. Such units included sanitary squads; POW guards; railway workers; engineers; salvage units; forestry troops; road construction companies; military police; signallers and ubiquitous labour battalions. However, the manner in which the military authorities controlled these formations was relatively uniform.
In general, it involved a system of rewards and punishments that applied to all the rank-and-file on active service. The former included regular wages, rations, health care, leave and leisure activities - ranging from concerts and organised games to access to alcohol and prostitutes.
Rewards were reserved for the obedient, those whose bearing or behaviour failed to match the army's exacting requirements were punished.
On active service, the punishments were severe, ranging in order of severity from fatigues, stoppages of pay, field punishment, spells of imprisonment with hard labour to penal servitude or execution by firing squad.
Unit commanders and courts-martial, most generally applied Field Punishments No.1 and No.2. Field Punishment No. 2 involved a soldier being billeted in the guard room or tent when out of the line, loss of pay, heavy fatigues and being inspected and compelled to drill for hours in full kit while being harassed and abused by NCOs. In contrast to the enforced mobility which accompanied that punishment, Field Punishment No.1, sometimes called the "crucifixion", consisted of being secured by the wrists and ankles to a fixed object (typically a wheel or fence) for several hours a day.
The widespread use of Field Punishment No.1, akin to being placed in the stocks, was peculiar to the British Army and was intended to produce discomfort and a sense of humiliation in those who were undergoing sentence.
It replaced flogging as a way of punishing white troops and allowed men undergoing sentence to continue to serve with their units. For example, combat troops sentenced to undergo Field Punishment No.1, would experience all the hardships of Field Punishment No.2 with the additional burden of being tied up for several hours a day.
In theory both forms of field punishment were intended to humiliate and well as produce physical discomfort without diminishing the number of personnel serving with a unit. In many cases this did not work in practice.
Men undergoing the maximum 28 days' punishment, which could be awarded by a commanding officer, posed few administrative problems but the sight of men undergoing Field Punishment No. 1 also stirred rank-and-file animosity. For example, Private Archie Surfleet, 13 East Yorkshires, recording his response on witnessing one of a group of artillerymen undergoing Field Punishment No. 1, commented:
"I don't think I have ever seen anything which so disgusted me in my life and I know feelings amongst our boys was very near mutiny at such inhuman treatment. I have seen some Infantry lads lashed to trees in Warnimont Woods, sometimes as many as five or six, spaced out amongst trees... and that seemed an anti-British sort of way to punish a man for any fault, but the expression on the face of this half crucified gunner got us all groggy. I have never heard such expressions of disgust from the troops before."
However, the increase in the size of the army was also accompanied by an increase in soldiers undergoing Field Punishment. As well as this general increase, adverse publicity in Britain about Field Punishment No.1 generated unprecedented publicity. Soldiers sentenced to long spells of penal servitude continued to be returned to serve out their time in Britain, but many with lesser sentences had their sentences commuted to heavy terms of Field Punishment No.1 and were retained in France.
