Shell-Shocked : A Suffolk Terrier - Private. Benjamin Hart
Julian Putkowski
Benjamin Hart, from Ipswich, was a labourer working in a local iron foundry when he joined the 1/4th (Territorial) Battalion, Suffolk Regiment on 23 October 1913, a couple or so months before his eighteenth birthday. In August 1914, when his battalion was mobilised, Hart was classified unfit and did not immediately proceed on active service when the battalion was despatched overseas. Nothing further is known about his military service but he eventually arrived in France on 22 January 1916 and about a week later he joined 4 Platoon, A Company.
Towards the end of March 1916 Hart and several of his comrades were buried alive after an enemy mine exploded under their position in the British trenches at the Brick Stacks, Cambrin. Hart was lucky to survive, as one of his rescuers later recalled, “I dug him out and he struggled back to the Aid Post, a distance of about ¾ mile. I do not know if anyone helped him. He was buried so that only his feet could be seen.’
On 9 May 1916 his commanding officer, Lt. Colonel F.W. Turner ordered the soldier be punished with 28 days’ Field Punishment No.1 for not complying with an NCO’s order.
The punishment, commonly referred to as ‘crucifixion’ involved soldiers (but never officers) undergoing sentence being tethered by their wrists and ankles to a fixed object, like a gun wheel, for a couple of hours a day. Carried out according to official regulations, Field Punishment No.1 was intended to humiliate and inflict a measure of discomfort akin to being put in a medieval pillory.
Unfortunately, NCO’s were sometimes sadistic in the implementation of the distinctive punishment and added sadistic refinements, including handcuffing a soldier’s wrists behind their backs, attaching a rope to the manacles and then hoisting the soldier undergoing sentence and leaving him dangling on tiptoes.
Hart may have been comparatively lucky enough to be punished in accordance with regulations but soldiers sentences to Field Punishment No.1 also had their rations cut and were required to engage in demanding fatigues, akin to tasks assigned a prisoners sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour – and they were severely penalised for any malingering or tardiness in observing orders. After ten days, Hart was accused by an NCO of being ‘Absent when ordered to parade with a working party, being at the time under sentence.’ He again appeared before his commanding officer on 20 May, and was sentenced to a further 28 days’ Field Punishment No.1.
While undergoing sentence, Hart was not segregated from his unit, although he was not tethered when the battalion was in the trenches, he was required to carry out fatigues. Hart was later to claim that during May his nerves gave way and he was briefly classified unfit for duty by the battalion’s Medical Officer, Captain J.D. Wells. After his nerves again gave way during the following month, Hart was sent to a Field Ambulance on 25 June and he remained with HQ company, 33 Division until 24 July.
By the time he rejoined the Suffolks, the battalion had lost a third of their number as a consequence of the fighting at Bazentin-le-Petit and High Wood during the opening stage of the Somme offensive and were recovering out of the line at Dernancourt.
It was ordered back into the support trenches on 13 August, and was preparing to be involved again in the heavy fighting around High Wood when Hart was reported missing. Circumstantially, he appears to have been absent for only a brief period of time but long enough to be charged with desertion.
He was tried by Field General Court Martial on 5 November and found not guilty of desertion but guilty of attempting to desert. He was sentenced to five years’ Penal Servitude but his sentence was suspended on 23 October and Hart again rejoined his battalion, just as it was preparing to move into the muddy quagmire of trenches at Trones Wood – but without Hart.
Of Hart, one of the Suffolks’ officers, 2/Lieutenant C.C. Stormont-Gibbs was later to recall:
“There was a man in the battalion who had run away on numerous occasions. His intelligence was low and he could not stand the war at all. After, I think, the sixth occasion when he had collected some twenty years or more ‘penal servitude’, I made him my servant so that he shouldn’t have to go into the line. Officers’ servants were always left behind at the transport lines.’
However, this arrangement did not appear to have permanently excused Hart from a spell in the trenches. At 33 Brigade Reserve at Petit Bois on 13 December, his platoon was told that they would be going into the line. The following morning they were all issued with gumboots and ordered to prepare to march away during the afternoon but Hart failed to turn up at the 2.15 pm parade, so the platoon marched off without him.
Two days later, Hart reported himself to the duty NCO at the Headquarters of the Area Commandant in Bray-sur-Somme. The Commandant, Major F. Pretty, 1/4 Suffolk Regiment was dissatisfied with the soldier’s explanation for his conduct, and ordered that he be to be handed over to the military police.
Hart was held in custody until 28 December, when he was charged with desertion and tried by Field General Court Martial on 28 December.
The court was presided over by Major W.F. Clair, 2 Bn. Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and the members were Captain A. Henderson MC, also from 2 Bn. Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and 2/Lt. H.R. Hubble, 4 Bn. King’s Liverpool Regiment. A Courts-Martial Officer, Capt. F.S.A. Baker, 2 Bn. Seaforth Highlanders assisted them in their deliberations.
The written proceedings of Hart’s court martial indicate that he pleaded not guilty and that in spite of being on trial for his life, like most soldiers who were executed by the British Army during the First World War, he was unassisted in presenting his defence.
Defence
After the witnesses for the prosecution had established the duration of Hart’s absence and the fact that he had avoided a tour of duty in the trenches, it was Hart’s turn to explain his absence:
“On 14th December I left the platoon as my nerves were too bad to go into the trenches. On the next day I tried to find the transport but was unable to do so and on 16th I went to report to the area commandant, Bray. I saw a Corporal there and told him I wished to report as I had left the regiment. I saw the Major and was then handed over to the police.”
He was not cross-examined but later Hart added in mitigation of his offence:
“I have been out in France for 10 months with my battalion. Sometime last May [query in margin: “?March”] near Givenchy I was buried by a shell. This upset my nerves and I have never been right since. I have twice been before the M.O. for nerves and was twice passed unfit by him, in July and May.”
The court found Hart guilty as charged and sentenced to death.
Comments about Hart’s character, fighting abilities and the state of discipline in his battalion were then invited from a succession of confirming officers. Hart’s battalion commander declared:
“a) Character from a fighting point of view bad. Character from point of view of behaviour indifference. His previous conduct in action showed signs of cowardice. Service with BEF 11 months.
b) In my opinion the crime was deliberately committed with the sole object of avoiding the particular service involved, i.e. the tour of duty in the trenches.”
The Officer Commanding 98 Infantry Brigade remarked that although the state of discipline in the battalion was good, he felt it was still necessary to execute the condemned soldier for the sake of example. He explained:
“I recommend that the extreme penalty be inflicted as this man is one of three who have been constantly setting a bad example to the remainder of the battalion by absenting themselves from tours of duty in the trenches.”
Lt. General Maitland, the Officer Commanding 33 Division declared:
“I concur. This man has escaped the extreme penalty before owing to insufficient evidence. Should he be given another chance I am afraid his example may be followed in his battalion.”
Only when the written proceedings were forwarded to Brigadier General J.D. Jebb, the Deputy Adjutant and Quartermaster General, HQ, XV Corps, was it felt necessary to have Hart medically examined. Jebb also demanded to know whether corroboration could be found to support Hart’s contention that he had been buried alive. Two of his comrades confirmed that the explosion of a shell had buried Hart. Lance Corporal Ratcliffe stated:
“At the end of March 1916 at Cambrin was buried by an enemy mine explosion. I dug him out and he struggled back to the Aid Post, a distance of about ¾ mile. I do not know if anyone helped him. He was buried so that only his feet could be seen.”
Unfortunately for Hart, the Medical Officer who had been with the 1/4 Suffolks during May and July 1916 was unavailable because he had been wounded and evacuated to England. The only documentary corroboration to support Hart’s contention that he had required medical attention for his nerves consisted of a solitary entry in the “Inspection Book”, that stated Hart had been suffering from a high temperature (102 F.) and had been sent to a Field Ambulance on 25 June.
The medical report on Hart was furnished by Captain William Brown, RAMC, Neurologist to 4 Army, who stated:
“The above mentioned man has been under observation in my ward during the past four days, and I can find no evidence of feeble mindedness or other defects in his case.”
On reading Brown’s comments about Hart, Lieutenant General J.B. Du Cane, the officer commanding XV Corps concluded, “The report is such as to afford no excuse for his conduct.”
Du Cane added, “In view of the statements of the G.O.C. Division and Brigade as to the effect of his example I recommend that the sentence be carried out.”
General Rawlinson and Field Marshal Haig concurred and approved Hart’s execution.
Stormont-Gibbs recalled what happened next:
“We were ordered to supply a firing party but everyone refused to do it. I wasn't going to press the company commanders on the subject. I rang up brigade and had a rather heated conversation about it and finally the poor chap was shot by someone else.”The officer who eventually supervised Hart’s execution at Suzanne at 6.46 a.m. on 6 February was Captain Charles F. Birley, Acting Assistant Provost Marshal, 33 Division but it was Stormont-Gibbs who sent the letter that told Hart’s mother how her son had come to be killed by the British Army.
The disinclination of the Field General Court Martial to call for expert medical testimony reflects a more general pattern. Expert medical testimony featured in only eleven of circa eighty cases of soldiers who claimed or inferred that they had been suffering from nerves when they committed their offences and who were subsequently executed.
In Hart’s case, the importance of medical testimony is evident from notes exchanged between the confirming officers. Brown’s appraisal of Hart’s state of mind and judgement provided the pivotal excuse for senior officers who wished to have the soldier executed.
Unfortunately, the written record does not include details about Brown’s examination but the neurologist’s post-war discourse on links between shell-shock and clairvoyance give cause for concern about the officer’s own state of mind and judgement. In 1929, Brown recalled
“While working as neurologist to the Fourth Army on the Somme I noticed that the strain of exposure to shell-fire produced apparently mediumistic or clairvoyant powers in a large number of soldiers; indeed, quite 15 per cent of soldiers suffering from shell-shock were found, immediately after the shock, to be easily hypnotizable, and, in a large proportion of these cases, they were found to exhibit powers - characteristics - extremely similar to, if not identical with, the characteristics that one reads about and hears of as belonging to mediums; that is to say, not only could they be easily put to sleep, put into a second mental state which appeared to be quite different from their normal waking state, but, when they were in this state, they appeared to have telepathic powers, they appeared to have clairvoyant powers.”
Brown continued:
“Let me take the powers of clairvoyance first. One found, when one hypnotized a patient who had perhaps left the field of battle within the previous day or two, that if one suggested to him that he would be able to see what was going on somewhere else, say in France or in England, and if one gave him a definite signal, told him, say, that one was going to put one's hand on his forehead and that then he would actually see what his father and mother were doing at home, one often got definite, positive results. That is to say, he would straightway appear to see something. He would feel that he was in England. “
Had Benjamin Hart told Brown that he felt he was in England, it is quite conceivable that the neurologist may have felt disposed to exercise a measure of consistency, and concluded that the condemned man was suffering from shell-shock - and the Ipswich lad’s life might have been spared.
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Copyright:© Julian Putkowski
