Tommy (75 page)

The case of Private James Haddock of 12/York and Lancaster is not untypical. When he was court-martialled for desertion in September 1916 two members of the court had gallantry awards and the third, also with front-line experience, was later killed in action. The court sentenced him to death and he was shot. The case is doubly informative because Private Haddock had deserted on his first day with the battalion. His CO, to whom he was a stranger, would have had no compunction in sending him for trial, and the fact that all three members of the court were in his regiment would have been more likely to harm than to help him.
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And it was not a good time to desert at the end of a long battle, when formation commanders and the commander in chief, all aware of the need to buttress discipline, were more likely to favour a more draconian approach than might have been the case in quieter times.

None of this meant, however, that courts martial did not sometimes commit injustices. Firstly, their members were all too well aware that they were small but important cogs in the disciplinary machine. Charles Carrington remembered that when he was being instructed on courts martial he was taught that ‘the first duty of the court was to ensure that the prisoner had every advantage to which he was legally entitled', but that ‘the court should not hesitate to pronounce a heavy sentence if the case was proved…'. Although Carrington retained a generally positive view of the war, he admitted:

Frank Crozier rebuked a major for excessive leniency as court martial president. When he began to say: ‘I thought a life sentence sufficient…' Crozier snapped that ‘you are merely there to do justice, not only to the prisoner but to discipline. It is not for you to judge the prevalence of a particular crime.'
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The experience and resolution of court-martial members varied immensely: some prosecuting officers were good at their jobs while others were not; some defendants were well represented while others simply threw themselves on the mercy of the court. Guy Chapman first sat on a court martial in 1916:

Bombardier Bill Sugden also had reason to be grateful to a wise president. He had ‘gone a bit potty' when sent round to the sergeants' mess with a message.

He was remanded for court martial and warned that ‘you are liable to be sentenced to death'. However, the president declared that a sober man with his excellent record must have been unreasonably provoked, and dismissed the case. ‘Then he ordered me outside and talked like a father to me,' wrote Sugden. ‘I was absolutely flattened out.'
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Striking a superior officer could indeed get a man shot. Two members of 72nd Battery RFA were shot on the same day, 3 October 1916, for unrelated acts of striking superiors, in one case a subaltern and in the other the battery sergeant major. Lord Cavan, the corps commander, wrote tellingly on documents on the case that: ‘I recommend that the death sentence be carried out as discipline in this battery is bad.'
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But the overwhelming majority of soldiers executed (266 out of 346) were shot for desertion, a crime which the army regarded particularly seriously. During the war the overall desertion rate ran at 10.26 per 1,000 men, more than a division of troops for the average size of the army on the Western Front. Circulars were issued warning officers against excessive leniency. Nonetheless, in order to convict the court had to be certain that the defendant was not simply absent without leave but had formed the intention of never returning to his unit. Walter Guinness found himself president of a Field General Court Martial in October 1916, and although there was ‘palpable desertion' the ‘half-witted youth prosecuting… never attempted to produce the necessary evidence'. In consequence, ‘we came to the conclusion that as the prosecution did not attempt to deal with the question of intention we could only find the man guilty of absence without leave'. He added that he was ‘particularly grateful' not to have to sentence the man to death.
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Not everyone was pleased at such even-handedness. On 25 January 1915 Gerald Burgoyne wrote ‘the man I ran in for sleeping at his post has just been remanded for a Field General Court Martial. I fear he will be shot… I fear this fellow will have to be made an example of.' But not long afterwards he added that the man: ‘got off with three months owing to a technicality. He was very lucky.'
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Early in 1915 it became clear that many men regarded a sentence of imprisonment, either in a military prison in France or Britain, as preferable to repeated tours of trench duty, and in April Parliament agreed that military sentences could be suspended: capital sentences by the commander in chief, others by army commanders. Many men sentenced to imprisonment were returned to their units, and an increasing number of those sentenced to death had the sentence commuted to a suspended sentence of five years. Feilding thought that suspended sentences were a good idea:

Many capital sentences inflicted in the second half of the war were on men already under suspended sentence for a previous offence. For instance, Private Evan Fraser of 2/Royal Scots deserted within a month of his first conviction, escaped from custody to desert again, was duly sentenced to death and was shot – becoming the first man under suspended sentence to be executed for reoffending.

A further area of controversy was the mental state of men tried for capital offences. The diagnosis of psychiatric illness caused by the war was in its infancy, and it was still a matter of some chance as to whether a soldier displaying a severe reaction to his experiences was treated as a patient or a criminal. Even in 1914 a man could be examined by a sympathetic doctor who diagnosed psychiatric breakdown. Private William Dunbar of the London Scottish ‘became a casualty with a complete collapse of my nervous system' in the autumn of 1914. He was evacuated to England, and recovered well enough to be commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery.
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But medical officers were under great pressure to report men as being fit for duty for as long as possible. Lord Moran described how a man reported sick for the second day running, saying: ‘It's no good, sir… I can't stand it no longer.' Moran examined him, found that ‘there was nothing wrong with him physically and he was sane enough. He was simply tired – but so were others. Once more I sent him back and the next day he was killed.' Here Moran felt that there was little choice. But he was critical of a colleague who went off to do a brief examination of a man facing a death sentence. ‘There's a fellow over there run away from the trenches,' said the doctor briskly, ‘they are going to shoot him and want me to say that he's responsible. I shan't be long.'
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Several soldiers were shot after pleading that they had been suffering from what was then termed ‘shell shock'. Lance Corporal William Moon of 11/Cheshires had been traumatised by what his company sergeant major described in court as ‘an incident that occurred on 31st December 1915 when a shell burst close to him and blew part of a comrade's head and brains into his face'. He went into hospital, but was ‘nervous' when he came back to the battalion, and deserted shortly afterwards. The defence did not call evidence from the doctors who had treated him in hospital, and his regimental medical officer told the court, not unreasonably, that he could offer no evidence on his mental state as he had not seen him since the incident. Although the brigadier recommended clemency, other formation commanders were not as benevolent, and William Moon was shot.
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Private John Docherty of the Black Watch, a veteran of Loos, tried for a second offence of desertion, was examined by two medical officers whose report stated: ‘Although not of unsound mind, he is suffering from a marked degree of neurasthenia. Whether this is the result of shell shock or of recent onset, we are unable to state.'
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The authorities were unimpressed, and on 15 February 1916 John Docherty was one of eleven men shot, with ghastly appropriateness, in the abattoir at Mazingarbe just behind the Loos front.

Three officers were executed during the war. One, Second Lieutenant John Patterson of the Essex Regiment shot a military policeman who was attempting to arrest him for desertion. Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Dyett of the Royal Naval Division was shot for desertion, as was Second Lieutenant Eric Poole of the West Yorkshires. The latter's brigadier wrote that he had previously been in hospital for shell shock, and was ‘of nervous temperament, useless in action, and dangerous as an example to the men'. An RAMC officer concluded that he was ‘of a highly-strung, neurotic temperament, and I am of the opinion that excitement may bring on a condition which would make him not responsible for his actions at the time'. At his court-martial the battalion's quartermaster declared that Second Lieutenant Poole was ‘very confused indeed' when apprehended, and his regimental medical officer also testified that he was ‘more liable to shell shock that a normal man'. Brigade, divisional and corps commanders recommended leniency, but Plumer, the army commander, wrote that he would have recommended Poole's execution had he been a private, and ‘in view of the inherent seriousness of the offence when committed by an officer' he supported the death penalty. Haig took precisely the same view, adding that all ranks must realise that the law applied to officers as well as privates, and confirmed the sentence. The adjutant general told 2nd Army that the promulgation of sentence of death did not involve cashiering. Eric Poole was accordingly dressed as an officer when he was shot at Poperinghe on 10 December 1916.

Once a death sentence was confirmed by the commander in chief it was read out to the condemned man. Harry Ogle described such a soldier having his sentence read out in the middle of his brigade, drawn up in hollow square, in the autumn of 1916.

Sometimes the sentence was announced before representatives from each unit in the brigade, or perhaps, as with the case of James Crozier described below, it was a battalion parade. The moral effect of death sentences was magnified by their promulgation in routine orders, so that soldiers across the whole of the British Expeditionary Force were well aware of what might just happen to them too. Normally a condemned soldier was told of the confirmation of his sentence the day before it was put into effect. He was already detained, either by his own regimental police or by the military police, within a short walk of the scene of execution. A single execution was likely to be carried out under regimental arrangements, with the assistant provost marshal from division in attendance. Soldiers from the victim's unit, under the command of an officer, constituted the firing party, and both the regimental sergeant major and provost sergeant would be on hand to ensure that the dreadful ritual went smoothly. A medical officer would pin an aiming mark – a piece of white cloth (rifle-cleaning four-by-two flannelette was convenient) – to the man's tunic over his heart while the man was being tied to the post. Sometimes the firing party arrived to find rifles ready, one of them unloaded, but this gentle deception was rare, for a man would know that his rifle had not fired, or notice the absence of a live round's sharp kick if it had been replaced by a blank. It was important that the firing party should be sober and as steady as possible, and above all to know that they would be doing their comrade no favours if they fired wide. Stage management was all, and one provost sergeant reported, with no hint of malice, that things had ‘gone off
champion'.