“Between 1914 and 1920 the British Army courts-martial system found nine out of every ten defendants guilty as charged. This was hardly surprising, given that most of the accused had virtually no opportunity to prepare a defence. Even when they were fortunate enough to be represented by a prisoner's friend, the latter were frequently without legal training and had very little time to prepare a case for the defence.
On trial for their lives, few defendants were either articulate or educated enough to present a coherent defence during proceedings which generally lasted about twenty minutes--and sometime as little as ten minutes. Most were working class men with a basic elementary education and in at least one case, that of Pte Edward Delargey of 1/8th. Royal Scots, could barely sign his own name.
Aged 20, Delargey had never been to school and could not read nor write. He had a wretchedly bad record for going AWOL and had been arrested after 173 day absence. That he was found guilty of desertion, partly on the basis of a written statement he signed, was unsurprising; that he was unassisted by a defending officer remains scandalous.
With no experience of self-advocacy, soldiers were prosecuted and judged by officers to whom they had been trained to defer. Frequently disabled by battle trauma, family troubles and fatigue, many defendants opted to remain silent throughout the proceedings or like 19-year-old Pte Joseph Byers, 1st. Royal Scots Fusiliers, pleaded guilty. They were given short shrift. Byers was executed even though General Horace Smith-Dorrien admitted:
"No. 15576 Pte J Byers pleaded guilty and that therefore no sworn evidence was taken and although this is legally correct it is just a question when a death sentence is involved the court should not make the men plead not guilty and take sworn evidence."
The officers who conducted these war-time courts-martial, sometimes included officers from the defendant's own battalion. In the case of nerve shattered Pte George Edward Roe, 2nd. King's Own Yorks and Lancs, the officer who presided over the court-martial was the same man who had charged him with desertion--his own battalion commander. Pte James Archibald was sentenced to death for desertion by a Field General Court-Martial, the president and one of the two members of which were from the defendant's unit, 17th. Royal Scots.
It must be conceded that the officers who served on courts-martial were under great pressure to impose heavy penalties. They evidently felt that it was the responsibility of more senior confirming officers to commute over-harsh sentences. But the hierarchy of battalion, brigade, divisional corps and Army commanders who were responsible for endorsing the court's sentence had scant appreciation of the condemned man's state.
This is clear from statements, frequently based on hearsay, about the convicted man. The confirming officers made minimal allowance for the strain that trench warfare imposed on the Tommies in the trenches. When Pte Arthur Grove Earp, 1/5 Warwicks pleaded that he had been unnerved by a shell explosion, Field Marshal Haig dismissed his excuse, commenting,
"How can we win if this plea is allowed?"
Corporal Jesse Wilton 15 Sherwood Foresters, recommended to mercy by a court which heard he had broken after an 18-hour enemy barrage, was condemned for being "too familiar" with his men. Pte Archibald, a 19 year-old Bantam from Edinburgh was a "typical slum product" of "poor intellect".
The confirming officer's comments, which resulted in execution went unchallenged for three reasons. Firstly, the man was never told what had been written down about his character or fighting capability. Secondly, there was no system of appeal against conviction or sentence. Thirdly, when they all-too-rarely took place, medical examinations which might have served to quash the sentences, were cursory.
In correspondence I have exchanged on these issues with the Prime Minister, John Major has pointed out that nine out of ten death sentences were not carried out. However, he has produced no documentary evidence to support his claim that all these were for medical reasons. And it would be wrong to infer that these commutations were systematically applied.
The decision whether or not to confirm a sentence was frequently arbitrary and unpredictable. For example, Pte Arthur Briggs, 9th. Notts & Derby overstayed his UK leave, pleading that he was providing for his destitute girlfriend and their baby. Briggs overstayed his leave to legitimate their relationship and establish a home. More impressed by NCO's "who describe him as a coward" than Brigg's defending officer or heart-rending explanation, the courts death sentence was endorsed by confirming officers. However, when Gunner William Casey, RFA overstayed his UK leave, his bride wrote to the court. Examining the proceedings, Casey's Corps Commander found the situation "beyond words, funny", commuted the sentence and "wrote to the girl, why by Gunner Casey's action was safely made Mrs Casey before the child arrived, and sent her a wedding present of a couple of pounds!"
More frequently, however, where a soldier had evidently broken down under the strain of persistent shellfire, sniping, lack of food and sleep in constant wet and cold, he was damned as a "worthless soldier". Senior officers appear to have felt it was consequently their duty to cull these weak specimens, thereby enhancing the fighting quality of the units who were herded into the next offensive. What other justification could there be for executing a man like No. 2974 Pte Bernard McGeehan?
McGeehan, who served in the 1/8th King's Liverpool regiment, was recorded to have been generally well-behaved but an indifferent fighter "of weak intellect", "incapable of understanding orders", and "worthless as a soldier". Undefended at his trial for desertion,McGeehan pleaded:
"Ever since I joined, all the men have made fun of me, and I didn't know what I was doing when I went away. Every time I go in the trenches they throw stones at me and pretend it is shrapnel, and they call me all sorts of names. I have been out here 18 months and had no leave."
He was executed on 2nd November 1916.
This practice, which condemned men to be executed for the sake of example, was as flawed as the decisions which led to the frequently pointless slaughter at the front. It also challenges the all-too-easy distinction frequently made between and "honourable" death in the muddy hell of no-man's land and a "dishonourable" death in front of a firing squad. If the latter were unequal to the task which cost the livers of the former, that they should all be remembered equally as brave British soldiers does not devalue their collective sacrifice. As matters stand, it's clear that at the going down of the sun we are expected to exclude from our thoughts those who were shot at dawn.
From documents which have been released under the provision of the 75-year public records rule, it is tragically apparent that many of those who faced the firing squad were sick, traumatised and suffering from shell shock. On the basis of exactly the same documents which led to these men's execution, for none have been "weeded", it is obvious that deep injustices were meted out to the condemned men.
It is not my intention to simply apply retrospective judgement in the light of recent medical discoveries about the psychological effects of battle trauma. Contemporary comments by the generals who condemned these men to death clearly understood the effects of trench warfare could wreak on the men they commanded. General Aylmer Hunter-Weston, for example, noted in a letter written on 8th June 1915 that:
"The ding-dong fighting and constant exposure to fire night and day has an effect on most men's nerves and more than one of the senior officers: brigade and battalion commanders, have broken down under the strain. It is marvellous how quickly most officers and men, who have not gone over the breaking point, recover after a good night's sleep and a couple of day's rest… When men get really physically exhausted to near the limit of human endurance, almost every man's mind and strength will go and some become jibbering idiots, as occurred to a very gallant young officer the other day. Fortunately that young officer was able to get fourteen hours continuous sleep after being taken from the font line and this saved him and made him quite fit again."
Such understanding never subsequently inhibited Hunter-Weston from sentencing shell-shocked men to death.
The comrades of such men were usually told when, why and roughly where a man was shot but they were never told about the condemned's length of service nor the confirming-officer's remarks. And the dead man's family? The men's families were invariably told even less about the decision to kill their breadwinner.
Very many executed men came from working-class families who, for generations, had supplied the British Army with the pride of its rank and file. Words can scarcely do justice to the emotional agony and shame that these poor souls were forced to endure. Until 1917, the executed men's families also lost their Army allowances. Women and children who were unable to pay the rent were evicted from their homes and faced a humiliating existence on parish relief. The treatment which was meted out to the men's dependants is an enduring disgrace which cries out, even at this late stage, for some form of redress.
Wartime censorship and War Office fears about unfavourable publicity affecting recruitment conspired to prevent the general public being informed of the executions during the war. When news occasionally surfaced in the press or via question in the House of Commons, the public were outraged at the callous injustice. For example, the shooting of Pte's Harry MacDonald, Richard Jones, Thomas Burton, Thomas Downing and Sgt Joseph Stones all provoked a contemporary public furore in Britain. Such expressions of public concern refute criticism--that I have fallen prey to judging past events solely from a present-day perspective. The government rattled by public opinion hastily stage-managed the 1919 Enquiry into War Time Courts-Martial and blocked further scrutiny of trial transcripts.
The efforts by Ernest Thurtle MP to abolish the death sentence for cowardice and desertion succeeded in 1929 and the Government should have simultaneously promulgated posthumous pardons for these offences. However, without access to the courts-martial transcripts, it was not then possible to fully appreciate the extent of the injustice which had been enacted.
To raise this issue now is not therefore a case of re-writing history, as some critics have wrongly maintained. The bulk of courts-marital papers have only been declassified in the last few years and I am seeking to ensure that history is written with clarity and precision. If this causes a measure of discomfort for the establishment after all this time it is partly due to their decision to hide the relevant documentation until now.
There is scarcely a family in our communities who cannot tell of a grandfather, father or uncle who fought in the war. We have all seen, spoken, touched and loved them. Just as they cannot be ignored and relegated to the dustbin of "history" neither can we fail to seek a remedy which will heal the enduring injury which was done to men whose reputations were broken by the sham trials of the Great War.”
