THOSE PARDONS—SOME PERSONAL THOUGHTS

by Bob Butcher

3055 members of the Imperial, Colonial and Overseas contingents (including three officers) were sentenced to death by courts martial. Only 327 (including the three officers) were actually executed, including fifteen for murder. The remaining 2728 sentences were suspended. Of the 324 'Other ranks' executed, ninety-one were under one or, in some cases, two, suspended death sentences.

 

The execution of British soldiers during the Great War is an emotional subject and emotion is the enemy of logic. Before proceeding further, I must therefore declare my long held opposition to capital punishment on both moral and practical grounds. However, it seems to me that in order to view this tragic era in a rational light, one must separate the conviction from the punishment that followed and move away from some of the campaigners' often emotional outpourings.

CONVICTIONS

It must,) think, be accepted that some men were convicted who ought not to have been either because of their mental condition or because of shortcomings in their trials. I would suggest that, equally, others were properly convicted. One is sometimes led mistakenly to believe that all those executed were not responsible for their actions because of what they had been through, a condition inaccurately described as 'shell shock'.

The best (or at least the most understandable) description of this condition that I have come across is roughly as follows. If a man is subjected to enough horror, danger or stress, he will sooner or later reach breaking point, and that point will be reached sooner in some men than in others. I cannot help feeling that the condition must have been difficult to appreciate at the time and am certain that we cannot now say which of those poor souls who faced the firing squad were in fact suffering from that condition.

The circumstances of the acts of cowardice, desertion, etc, of some prisoners and of their arrest, clearly indicate that they were in full possession of their faculties and knew full well what they were doing when they let their comrades down. They deserved to be punished although not necessarily by death according to our present enlightened standards. The difficulty is in distinguishing between these unworthy cases and those genuinely suffering from shell shock. I would suggest that this difficulty means that to grant a blanket pardon is to place the genuine cases on the level with the less deserving cases. This dishonours them and even more so, the majority of soldiers who had been subjected to the same ordeals but had stuck it out. In fairness, I think that these less worthy cases should be regarded as 'victims of war' for had it not been for the war, they would not have been in their predicaments.

Turning to the questions of fair trials and justice. In criminal law a fair trial is usually taken to be one in which the rules are followed, giving the lawyers plenty of scope. Justice means, or should mean, that an innocent person is not convicted but, equally, that a guilty person is. I’ll leave you to ponder whether justice is always dispensed but what I am really saying is that a true verdict (ie justice) may be delivered even if some of the rules have been broken. One cannot deny that some court martial proceedings in operational zones were probably flawed by 'peace' standards resulting in some miscarriages of justice. On the other hand I am inclined to think that in most cases 'justice' was done, that is that the prisoner actually committed the crime of which he stood accused even though the trial may have been flawed.

PUNISHMENT It cannot be denied that an army needs discipline, that discipline requires obedience and that disobedience entails sanctions of some sort. Discipline', incidentally, has been defined as that which makes one do that which one would rather not do. The problem is what sort of sanctions (punishment) is appropriate in the case of someone trying, for whatever reason, to avoid front line duty? I feel bound to say, however, that whatever one's view on capital punishment, the execution of a seventeen year old youth could not be justified by any standard.

The prisoner could, of course, have been sent to prison but even if that institution be very harsh, would not that be helping him to achieve his purpose? After all, the war could not last for ever and at the end of it a general amnesty would be highly likely. A possible alternative would be to make him serve his sentence in a penal battalion so that he would not escape front line duty. In fact, unlike some other armies, the British did not have such units. I don't know if the possibility was ever considered and if it was, the argument against it.

As it happened, the Army resorted to the alternative of passing a death sentence but suspending it. Thus the prisoner would return to the line and would not pay the penalty if he gave no further cause for complaint. As the figures at the top of this article indicate, this course was followed in the majority of cases. The success or otherwise of this can be judged by the number of those who re-offended and ultimately paid the price.

Incidentally, one veteran said that the thought of a firing squad steadied his nerves and helped him to do his duty. It must also be pointed out that Australia of all the Dominions was the only one that did not permit the execution of its soldiers and that the desertion rate among Australian soldiers in France was much higher than in the case of those other equally fine Dominion soldiers.

It is scarcely necessary to remind you (but I'm going to anyhow) that although the military administered the relevant law ( the Army Act) they did not make it. That was done by Parliament supposedly acting on behalf of the nation. Capital punishment was, of course, then an integral part of the British legal system and was accepted as right by the majority of the people.

 

 

 

BOOK OF Tl-E MONTH: No 13 A PASSIONATE PRODIGALITY by Guy Chapman. This is another one of those books which I read a long time ago but I seem to remember that it was one of the better of the veteran's accounts. On the subject of recommending books, may I suggest that YOU make one as I am running out of books in our library that I have actually read and feel justified in recommending: Bob

 

The Bulletin of the Birmingham Branch of the WFA

Compiled by Bob Butcher

October  2006 2006