Private Archibald Browne, 2nd Battalion, Essex Regiment
Julian Putkowksi
The 2nd Battalion, Essex Regiment was mobilised at the outbreak of war and landed at le Havre on 24 August and three days later they were on the receiving end of the German attack at at le Cateau. The enemy smashed into the battalion and and before the day ended a quarter of the battalion were casualties: 93 officers and men had been killed; 41 were wounded and 98 soldiers were reported missing in action. The survivors, along with the remainder of the British Expeditionary Force, were continually harried by the German advance and compelled to retreat.
The exhausting daily routine was sustained for almost three weeks, and by the end of September the battalion lost a further 14 killed and 84 wounded. In October the battalion was transported to hold the front line, repulsing enemy attacks in the vicinity of Ploegstreet Wood and Chapelle d’Armentieres. However, by the second week in November the British line had stabilised, and 19 November found the 2 Battalion Essex Regiment was holding a line of freezing cold British trenches between Le Gheer and the River Warnave.
Because conditions in the trenches were so uncomfortable and dangerous, that a parties of men from the reserve lines were regularly despatched to relieve those in forward positions. One such relief party, made up of a section of men from 12 Platoon, was being conducted across the snowy countryside to the firing line held by the battalion, when the NCO in charge was told that a soldier had fallen out. The NCO, 7640 Sgt. H.J. Sparks called a temporary halt and ordered Pte. Browne to escort the sick man back to Des Pieres farm, where the latter could be given medical attention. After handing over the sick man, Pte. Browne was then ordered to rejoin his section.[1]
However, Browne did not rejoin his battalion until 28 November when, after having been arrested and held in custody by the French gendarmerie, followed by a spell under detention at Brigade headquarters, he was brought back under armed guard [2] He was then charged with three offences: desertion, breaking into a house in search of plunder and when in arrest, escaping. It was arranged that he be tried by Field General Court Martial (FGCM) at Le Bizet on 9 December.
The FGCM was presided over by Captain Arthur.C. Halahan, who was an officer serving in the same battalion as the defendant. This was not an unusual state of affairs during the First World War but the Manual of Military Law stipulated that the president of an FGCM had to be a more senior officer of field rank, generally a Major. However, Brown was one of seven soldiers, charged with a range of serious offences who were scheduled to be tried that day by the same FGCM. The Brigadier was legally permitted to deviate from military regulations and excused the arrangement by explaining that of the three available Field Officers available for the task, two were commanding officers of others of the accused brought before the FGCM and the third was on duty in the firing line. Exercising a curious logic, the Brigade Commander, whose entire pre-war service had been with the Essex Regiment, thereby implicitly acknowledged an FGCM presided over by an officer from a defendant’s unit might prejudice the latter’s chances of a fair trial but appears to have considered that such a hazard did not apply in Brown’s case.[3] The two members of the FGCM were Captain Russell Luckock and Lt. John Taylor, 2nd Battalion, Monmouth Regiment.[4]
The FGCM dealt with five cases before it tried Browne. As in the vast majority of similar capital cases, Browne was wholly unassisted in presenting his defence. The identity of the prosecutor is not disclosed in the written proceedings but it was customarily the Adjutant of the battalion to which the defendant belonged. Browne’s trial opened with testimony from four witnesses who collectively verified the day when he went absent and the date on which he was returned to his unit.
The fifth and sixth witnesses were the two French gendarmes who had arrested Browne on 24 November. Via an interpreter, the first gendarme told the court:
“I was on duty on the Cassel Road near Hazebrouck. I saw a man coming whom I recognise as the accused, dressed in civilian clothes. When the gendarme who was with me asked the accused for his pass, he presented his Military Book. According to my orders I had to arrest him. The Accused said he was coming from the German lines to Armentieres.”[5]
The second gendarme broadly corroborated what his companion had stated, and recalled that when Browne had been stopped at 1.00 p.m., the soldier had produced two military books. Possibly in response to prompting from the prosecutor, the witness also remembered that Browne was carrying a stick and was wearing, “a round hat, a muffler, dark overcoat, black trousers.”[6]
Strong circumstantial evidence to support the second charge was presented by a brace of French witnesses, a civilian and yet another gendarme, suggesting that Browne had broken into a temporarily unoccupied house in Armentieres. After gaining entry by smashing a kitchen window, it appeared that Brown had abandoned his rifle and military equipment, and may have drunk some champagne before kitting himself out in civilian clothing belonging to the house owner.[7]
The third charge, escaping from custody, had occurred on 2 December, when Brown managed to escape from detention. He had slipped away from .his guards when the latter had been distributing rations but after about ten minutes’ liberty, Browne was nabbed by an observant and suspicious Colour Sergeant from the 2nd Bn. Essex Regiment. Browne was returned to the guardroom so quickly that the duty NCO had not even realised his prisoner had been foiled in an escape bid.[8]
By way of addressing the charges levelled against him, the following uncertainly drafted written statement was presented to the court by Pte. Browne
“About 5 nights ago he was on the way to the trenches to join his Coy. Near Armentieres. When Pte. Page same Coy & Rgt was taken ill & he was detailed to take him to Rgtl Headqrs. After handing over Pte. Page to C.Q.M.Sgt. Reel , Essex Rgt. I was ordered to proceed to the trenches by C.Q.M.Sgt. Reel. On the way back, I was caught in a heavy snowstorm & lost my way & came across a party of 6 German soldiers who captured him. I was taken in front of an officer of the German Army, dressed in a British Staff officers uniform. After being questioned I was stripped of all my clothing & was given a pair of German uniform trousers & a dungaree jacket & and old pair of boots & then placed in a barn uder arrest from which I escaped the same night, made for what he thought the direction of the British linees. After wandering about alnight he came across a house where he was given food & supplied with the clothes he now wears. He was taken ill & remained at this house for 2 days & then proceeded to find his unit, failing to do so, he stayed in an empty house the following night & set off the next morning, eventually arriving at Hazebrouck, where he was detained by the French on the afternoon of 24.11.14 & brought to GHQrs.[9]
Browne said nothing to support his written submission or to provide an alternative explanation for his conduct. Unsurprisingly, he was found guilty and sentenced to death.
The opening months of the war witnessed the British Army being relentlessly harried by the advancing German Army. The retreating tommies were compelled to march without respite for days on end, coping not only battle stress but also extreme physical exhaustion and loss of sleep. The problems generated by fatigue were exacerbated by the Army’s sporadic difficulties in the forward supply of food and clean clothing for the men on the move. However, by the end of November the German onslaught petered out and senior British commanders took advantage of the lull to reaffirm their power over the rank and file.
Hitherto, the Army’s disciplinary priorities had been informed by the priorities associated with an army in retreat. British commanders needed to stop worn-out soldiers from falling asleep on duty or swilling cheap or looted local booze. They also wished to curb straggling that was the near-inevitable feature of any forced retirement. The means the Army employed to remedy straggling was exemplified by most graphically by the near-summary trial and execution of the straggler Pte. Thomas Highgate on 8 September 1914.
The lull in the German offensive enabled the British to consolidate their front line and granted the rank and file a much-needed respite from near non-stop marching and fighting. It also created opportunities to remedy shortcomings in organisation and delivery of supplies, to improvise and also improve soldiers’ accommodation.
During the retreat drunkenness had been a major problem, with troops taking advantage of opportunities to purchase cheap local booze or the fruit of promiscuous looting of wine cellars. In addition to more robust policing, pleading drunkenness was no longer accepted at courts-martial as an excuse for absence from duty, a point exemplified in early 1915 by the executions of Ptes. Lathom, Evans, Collins and Hope.
As for promiscuous looting, in addition to remedying the problem it posed for good order, British senior commanders needed to placate both the victims of crime and the local French Police. Clear instructions about the arrest of British soldiers by Field Marshal French appear to have been circulated on 24 November to the gendarmerie.[10]
The spectacular recourse to the firing squad in Browne’s case provided an appropriate response that would satisfy French civilians and local gendarmes’ desire for evidence of the British Army’s robust punishment of deserters and thieves. These are the factors that would have informed the selection of Browne as a fodder for the firing squad when the written proceedings were forwarded by the Adjutant General for Field Marshal French’s confirmation on 17.12.14.
Pte. Browne was duly executed at 7.00 a.m. on 19 December12.1914. He has no known grave but his name is commemorated on the Ploegstreet Memorial to the Missing, and the CWGC records that he was the 26-year old son of Mrs Elizabeth Browne, who was living at Greene Street, Ingatestone when the Imperial War Graves Commission register was being compiled shortly after the end of the war.
[1] WO 71/390 JAG – FGCM: Pte. A Brown: Evidence of 7640 Sgt. H.J. Sparks; 10004 ; 6539 L/Cpl. F. Elgram, all 2nd Bn.. Essex Regiment.
[2] Ibid., Evidence of 6497 L/Cpl. J. Winter, 2nd Bn. Essex Regiment.
[3] Ibid., Schedule: Note by Brigadier Fredrick Gore Anley, OC 12th Infantry Brigade, 4 Division, 15.12.1915. Anley (b. 1864) was commissioned in 1884 (Essex Regiment) and was eventually promoted to Lt. Colonel on. 23.2.1912. He served with the regiment in a number of C19th colonial campaigns and was a veteran of the war in South Africa. His command of 12th Brigade had only commenced on 20.10.1914.
[4] Also in attendance “under instruction” was Lt. A.E. Fraser, 2nd Bn. Monmouths. Arthur Crosby Halahan and Russell Mortimer Lucock survived the war but Lt. John William Taylor was KIA, 12.3.1915.
[5] WO 71/390, op. cit.: Evidence of Gendarme Laurent Laudebat.
[6] Ibid., Evidence of Gendarme Adrien Favereau.
[7] Ibid., Evidence of M. Moirmain, Rue de Messines, Armentieres and Gendarme Tourneur. Their statements were corroborated by 6497 L/Cpl. J. Winter, Mounter Military Police, 4 Division HQ.
[8] Ibid,, Evidence of 9251 C.Sgt. W. Hindley; 7294 Pte. E. Staff; 577 Sgt. M Hay, all serving with 2 Bn. Essex Regiment.
[9] Ibid: Defence Statement: Pte. Archibald Browne.
[10] Ibid., Gendarmarie Nationale Report: Arrest of No. 8278 Pte., Gendarmes Foureau and Laudebat 24.11.1914.
Copyright: © Julian Putkowski
