The SAD Campaign that Secured Millennium Pardons for British and Commonwealth Soldiers Executed during the First World War
Shot At Dawn
Belgian Executions
Piet Chielens
A complete study of those executed in the Belgian army during the First World War has as yet not been done because of the restricted accessibility of the files.
The Centre for Historical Documentation in Evere and the archives of the Royal Museum of the Army and Military Science are properly open to each researcher and to descendants, but there only the personal files are kept.
To have access to a penal case from the First World War, however, permission is necessary from the Auditoriate General of the Military Court. The co-operation that this institute gives to such studies is minimal. Penal cases, according the Belgian Archive Law, remain confidential for 100 years and only exceptionally is this rule deviated from in part. In the past, a few research projects were honoured with the co-operation of the Auditor-General, and penal cases could be examined.
In cases of rehabilitation or acquittal, inspection is refused. Family members in the non-direct line are refused. Permission did come in 1998 for a VR programme “In the Face of the Enemy” by RIA Van Abloom and Marlin de VSO, a production of Bert Governs, which was broadcast on 10 November 1998 in the series "Histories on Canvas".
Up to the present, it has been assumed that thirteen Belgian soldiers were executed by firing squad during the First World War. These then, are the only court-martial trials known today in which a death penalty was pronounced that resulted in an execution. We can divide these thirteen into clearly distinct groups.
The first case one could call an error. After he had been recalled at the end of July 1914, the soldier Honour Doyen, of the fortress garrison artillery in Antwerp, was declared unfit on 6 September 1914 and sent home. As he was going home, he was arrested on 10 September by the Gendarmerie.
On 14 September, he was convicted as a spy by a court martial in Flanders and executed by firing squad on 17 September in the city park in Ghent. After the war, the “error” came to light. Doyen was rehabilitated on 12 November 1926. He seems to have been a victim of the chaos of the first days of the war.
Shortly thereafter, a great effort was made to set things right. The 3rd Line Regiment, in particular, opted for a hard approach. Many soldiers failed to report for every muster during the retreat to Antwerp. If one wanted to make an example of some, they were then easy to find. This resulted in three executions on 21 September 1914. The career soldier Elie-Jean De Leeuw was executed in Mechelen, the recalled draftees Jean Raes and Alphonse Verdickt in the cemetery of Walem.
During the battle of the Yser, four Belgian solders were executed very very quickly for failing to obey orders by way of desertion. In each case, the absence was very brief, and the execution followed very quickly after the judgement of the court-martial. The appeal for a pardon to the king was refused, and the execution carried out in the immediate vicinity of the unit at the front. The soldiers concerned were Leopold Noel (Nieuwkapelle, 18 October), Alphons Gielen and Louis De Vos (Nieuwpoort-Groenendijk, 19 October), and Victor-François Remy (Pervyse, 22 October).
After the Battle of the Yser, the Belgian army organised itself for trench warfare. The adaptation took a relatively long time, and the organisation and discipline left something to be desired. Numerous illegal absences were first dealt with rather leniently. After warnings by the auditors and the army leadership, the action gradually became stricter. Two cases of repeated brief absences – each time two or three days – in the 1st Infantry Regiment led ultimately to two executions. What is striking in both cases is that the soldiers declared that they were too afraid to go to the first line.
The Infantry Regiment was at that time (after 23 April 1915) involved in the heavy fighting near Steenstrate as an element of the 6th Army Division. After the heaviest battle had been fought, the classic pattern developed here as in other armies: a few examples were intended to show how much salvation (or damnation) had to come from the efforts of the men themselves. The examples were Paul Vanden Bosch (4 May at Pollinkhove) and Henri Reyns (17 May 1915 at Oost-Vleteren).
Around this time, reforms to the penal system began. While the Belgian army kept up with the allies regarding the matter of executions, from April 1915 on, voices were raised to change the system; Lieutenant-General Antoine de Selliers de Moranville, the Inspector General of the Belgian army, was assigned the task.
On 17 May 1915, a special penitentiary corps was set up. It was divided into several companies, a discipline company, a punishment company, and a rehabilitation company. The first served for the removal of undesirable soldiers from the fighting units. Those who were condemned to a prison sentence with a strict regime (solitary confinement, forced labour) were put into a penal company. After serving in the disciplinary or penal company, one was transferred to a rehabilitation company. Each army division had one such company.
The members of this company were actually assigned the dirtiest and heaviest work of the army division. After three to six months in these companies, the condemned person could return to his own unit. At that moment, the complete penalty was remitted and the soldier was also completely rehabilitated in the eyes of the army.
This penal system could apply for all Belgian soldiers and for most crimes. It concerned, “...all elements who were undesirable or were incorrigible, who are permanent examples of a lack of discipline, from whom a deleterious influence proceeded, who were without patriotism, or were prepared to live under an extreme penal regime if they could thereby escape the dangers of fighting.” In principle, it thus covered all crimes. It meant that, in the disciplinary camps, one could encounter both inveterate deserters as well and extreme Flemish militants, victims of fear syndromes alongside undisciplined criminals.
Only for treason and murder was the old formula of the death penalty still applied.
After 17 May 1915, in the Belgian army on the Yser, three murderers were executed. On 6 July 1915, the Lancer François-Alphonse Van Herreweghe shot his lieutenant dead. On the same day, he was tried and executed by firing squad at Wulpen. On 26 March 1918, Quartermaster Emile Verfaille died on the guillotine in the prison of Veurne, after he had killed his fiancée. The last fusillade echoed on the dunes of Oostduinkerke on 3 June 1918. The volunteer Aloïs Wulput had killed his corporal 14 days previously in the prison of De Panne.
There are most probably a number of reasons for this unique reversal in the penalty policy of the Belgian army. The Minister of War, Charles de Broqueville, announced the set of measures on the birthday of Queen Elisabeth on 25 July 1915. Whether she or the king personally had intervened in the matter is not known. No announcement was made in the published journals, but it did fit well into the broadly disseminated picture of the very humane royal couple, who were very concerned for the welfare of the men.
The Inspector General in his initial comments of 17 May 1915 stated that the unexpectedly long duration of the war made the special disciplinary companies necessary. However, it was nowhere said that these penal measures replaced the death penalty or its execution. That only appeared to be the case in practice.
If we examine the scarce statistical date about this penitential corps, we see that the number of soldiers who ended up in a penal or disciplinary company after a second or a third attempt at desertion is surely high. If we compare this with the number of executions that were carried out, for example, in the British army with such repeaters, then the Belgian system of the “second chance” can be called nothing other than “life saving”.
Piet Chielens
Piet Chielens (°1956) was born in Reningelst, where he still lives and where he grew up hearing stories about, and seeing graves from, the Great War. He is the coordinator of the In Flanders Fields Museum at Ieper (1996) and artistic director of Vredesconcerten Passendale (1992). He contributes to countless publications (CDs, guides and books) for both these institutions.
Piet Chielens has written "De Poproute, fietsen achter het front" (The Poproute; cycling tours behind the Front; IPS, 1995) and, with his brother Wim Chielens "De Troost van Schoonheid, de literaire Salient 1914-1918" (The Consolation of Beauty, the Literary Salient 1914-1918; Globe, 1996). In the autumn, he will be publishing "De Oorlog die niet overgaat" (‘The War That Will Not Go Away’, in De Verbeelding van de Westhoek, Niek De Roo, ed., Lannoo) and, with Julian Putkowski, "Rusteloze Graven. Executies in de Eerste Wereldoorlog in de Westhoek" (Unquiet Graves: Executions in Flanders in World War One, Globe).
This is a summary of an address given at the "Unquiet Graves" International Conference on Executions held in Flanders in May 2000.