British to Review Executions
of WWI Deserters

News

by David W. Tschanz

LONDON — The court-martial records list him only as Cpl. C. Lewis, an American from Butte, Mont., who came to London on holiday and was persuaded to join the British army when war broke out. Lewis might reasonably have wondered at the time if he would give his life for Britain on the field of battle, but that did not happen. On a March day in 1916, on a field in France, his hands were tied behind him, a blindfold was placed around his head and he was shot at dawn by his fellow soldiers in the British army. He had been convicted of deserting his unit in the heat of battle.

More than 300 soldiers in the British army suffered a similar fate in World War I. Possibly two of them were Americans and 25 were Canadians. Were they cowards who deserved to be shot? Or were many of them simply frightened and confused young men, suffering from shell shock and deserving medical treatment rather than death?

Seventy-nine years after that war ended, a public debate is swirling around these questions in Britain, and the issue might be headed toward some kind of resolution.

The Conservative government of former Prime Minister John Major refused to consider demands for pardons for those who were executed, arguing that history could not be rewritten in the light of modern standards.

But one of the first acts of Prime Minister Tony Blair when he took office in May was to order a review of the cases by Armed Forces Minister John Reid. The Sunday Times reported this week that Reid has decided to "right the wrong" inflicted on the dead men and their families. The paper said a final decision will be made early next year on whether to grant a blanket pardon or consider pardons on a case-by-case basis.

Until now, suggestions of pardons have run into strong opposition from the Defense Ministry. Julian Putkowski, co-author of the 1989 book "Shot at Dawn," said the ministry has been "dragging its feet and fighting a rear guard action. The families of the men who were executed want posthumous pardons, but the army has never apologized for anything. A lot of those who were executed had impeccable battlefield records. They just cracked up." Andrew Mackinlay, a Labor member of Parliament, has been trying since 1993 to get through the House of Commons a private bill that would give the government the choice of a blanket pardon or a review of each case.

"A pardon for those whose nerves and physique were unequal to the struggle would be an antidote to the poison which taints remembering," he has said.

Those who favor pardons do not deny that some of those who were executed were indeed cowards and deserters who in some cases might have run away even before they had been in battle. But they argue that the system of military justice was so flawed at the time as to make fair trials impossible and that pardons can be justified on that basis.

One of those backing this argument is Judge Anthony Babington. He noted that the average court-martial lasted only 20 to 30 minutes, defendants were often unrepresented by counsel, there frequently was no cross-examination of prosecution witnesses, medical evidence was either not sought or was ignored, judges usually had no legal training or guidance, and there was no appeal of the death sentence. "Most of the defendants were poorly educated and they approached the court-martial in a spirit of defeatism," he said.

He also said the army executed many offenders simply to set an example for other soldiers so they would not be tempted to desert.

The debate about the executions has developed only recently because court-martial records were sealed for 75 years and first made public in the early 1990s. Babington was given access to the records in the 1980s and wrote a highly critical book at the time. He said he was "horrified" when he read the records and learned of the injustices he felt had been perpetrated.

John Hipkin, 71, a retired Newcastle literature and history teacher, has been among the most active of those campaigning for pardons and has been arrested for staging one-man demonstrations. He is particularly incensed that five of those who were executed were underage boys who lied about their age to join the army at 16. The legal age was 19.

These were "blatantly illegal executions," he said, of boys who should have been sent home when their ages were discovered. Hipkin has a sense of identification with the boys. He was 14 when he joined the Merchant Navy as a cabin boy. His ship was sunk by a German U-boat in World War II, and he spent several years in a German prison camp.

"The point to remember is that some men were guilty of cowardice," he said, "but courage wears out in battle like a soldier's clothes. It is like a bank account in which you put nothing in and are constantly making withdrawals. The boredom of the trenches or a sudden traumatic incident can make a man snap."

It is now recognized that World War I posed particularly difficult psychological strains on soldiers. Men spent months in the trenches, often under wretched weather conditions and subjected to intense bombardment, without advancing. At the battle of the Somme, in which British generals sent thousands of men to their deaths through a curtain of German artillery and machine-gun fire in a failed attempt to stage a breakthrough, about 30,000 troops cracked up.

Officers who succumbed to shell shock, or post-traumatic stress disorder as it is now known, usually were sent home for medical treatment. Among them were the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Owen eventually recovered and was killed in battle.

Ordinary soldiers, instead of being sent home, were often subjected to courts-martial.

Lewis, 26, deserted his unit, the 12th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, on Jan. 23, 1916, as it was about to go into action against German forces in France. He was arrested 18 days later, wearing civilian clothes.

At his trial, he testified: "There was a heavy bombardment and I lost my nerve, also my memory." Lewis said he had been caught in an explosion in 1912 while working in a DuPont Powder Co. plant in Canada, "and I have never been right since. . . . I have been subject to these fits ever since, and I have no control over myself when they come over me."  

His commanding officer testified that Lewis was a good soldier and doubted that Lewis had left the front solely to avoid duty. Lewis previously had shown signs of "nervousness and excitability" and "appears to be rather weak-minded," the commanding officer said. That did not sway the court or a general who confirmed its sentence.  

Putkowski, who has researched records of courts-martial involving death sentences, also has uncovered the case of a Pvt. John Brennan, a soldier in the 1/8th Battalion, King's Liverpool Regiment, who also claimed to be an American citizen. Brennan, who had been repeatedly absent without leave and guilty of other offenses while still on duty in Britain, deserted June 4, 1916, in France, turned himself in four days later, and was tried and convicted June 30. He was executed the next month.  

The Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies conducted a symposium about the executions last week. The panel was composed primarily of people with military connections, and most of them indicated they were opposed to a blanket pardon.  

Gen. Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley, a leading military historian, said the army had no alternative to shooting soldiers occasionally. "What kept people going (in the war) was not letting down their friends," he said. British courts-martial in World War I handed down 3,080 death sentences, but most were commuted. In the U.S. military, 145 men were sentenced to death, and 35 executions were carried out. Just 10 of the U.S. soldiers were convicted for battle-front offenses. The rest were tried in the U.S., mostly for murder or rape. In 1930, Britain abolished military death sentences, except for mutiny and treason. The U.S. military retained the death sentence but in World War II executed only one man, Pvt. Eddie Slovik of Detroit, for desertion  

—Chicago Tribune, 11/29/97

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© Copyright 1999 by David W. Tschanz.
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