My Boy Jack

     18 year old Second Lieut. John Kipling was weeping as he staggered through the mud. He lost his glasses and the pain from the bullet wound in his jaw was excruciating. How he wished he was back home instead of the stinking, filthy charnel house that was the Loos Battlefield. It was September 27th, 1915 and Kipling's regiment, the famed Irish Guards had taken a pounding while advancing on the German held positions near Hill 70. In reality, John (Jack) Kipling should not have even been here. His eyesight was so poor he was initially rejected from military service but was given a commission with the Irish Guards thanks to the influence of his father, famed author Rudyard Kipling.

     Jack had just turned 18 when he was posted to France. Within six weeks, 13 British divisions, including the Irish Guards, would be in action in what was to become the Battle of Loos. Initially, the huge number of both French and British soldiers gave them a brief advantage that allowed for the capture of the town of Loos. However due to communication and supply problems, the breakout could not be exploited and the delay gave the Germans time to reinforce their positions. This proved disastrous for the allies the next day as they attempted to take the fortified German lines. In four hours of fighting, there were over 8,000 casualties out of a total force of 10,000 men.

     Initially, Jack was listing as missing after the battle as were so many thousands of young men. The notion of being missing in combat can have several meanings. One can be unaccounted for, but completely safe in a different sector or, as is often the case, there can be no identifiable remains whatsoever. The body can be blown to atoms by high explosive shells in an instant or buried under tons of mud and earth. All anyone knew that 2nd Lt Kipling was missing from the battle. Rudyard and his wife, Caroline, were completely grief stricken. Using every possible channel and high level contact, they tried desperately to get any news of the whereabouts of their son, but as the weeks stretched into months and then years, it became apparent that Jack was dead and his remains had been lost. Shortly after he was declared missing in 1915, Rudyard Kipling wrote this poem for his son:

"Have you news of my boy Jack?"
Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
"Has any one else had word of him?"
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind -
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.

     In 1992, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission announced that a grave of an unknown Irish Guards Lieutenant located in the St. Mary's Advance Dressing Station Cemetery in Pas de Calais had been identified as that of Jack Kipling. However, that claim is in dispute for several reasons. The body that was found had rank pips belonging to a 1st Lt and Kipling at the time of his death was only a 2nd LT. Also, the location of where the body of the 1st LT was found was misidentified as well. The curator of the Irish Guards museum even stated that the body in the grave is most assuredly not Jack Kipling. So today, 2nd Lt. John Kipling has two memorials. One is the headstone in St Mary's Cemetery and the other is on the Memorial to the Missing at Loos that list over 20,000 men who have no known grave.

Shot at Dawn

     Called “shell-shock” during the Great War, today it’s known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it is a legitimate battlefield injury. Today having PTSD can give you access to medical care as well as disability benefits with the government. During the Great War, it could get you shot at dawn for cowardice.

     Between 1914 and 1918,  306 British soldiers were executed by firing squad for such offenses as desertion, cowardice, striking an officer, throwing away arms and falling asleep on duty. Those who were sentenced to death were denied legal representation and the right of appeal and were shot very soon after their court martial ended. In many cases, the men were not even examined by a physician before the hearing. The average length of a court martial hearing was about twenty minutes. Usually, the condemned was led back to his cell and shot by a firing party at dawn the next day.

     On the morning of the execution, the condemned soldier was led out of his cell or holding facility, having spent the night with the company of a regimental chaplain. He was then brought to the place of execution and tied to a single post. A small section of white cloth was pinned to the soldier’s chest over where his heart would be. This would give the firing party something to aim at and would, in theory, result in instantaneous death. If not, the commanding officer was obliged to shoot the wounded solider in the head with his pistol. The firing party was made up of six soldiers usually, and one would surreptitiously be issued with a blank round so that no one soldier could be 100% certain that he fired the fatal shot.

     One of the first soldiers to be executed was Private Thomas Highgate who fled from the Battle of Mons, unable to bear the carnage. He was found hiding in a barn and was immediately court-martialled and found guilty despite the fact that he was undefended as all of his comrades to a man had been killed in the slaughter at Mons. A senior officer insisted that Highgate be shot “At once, as publicly as possible”. Highgate was informed of his fate, and was shot 43 minutes later. He was 19 years old.

     Another tragic case was that of Herbert Burden, who at age 16, lied about his age to enlist into the Northumberland Fusiliers. Ten months later, he was court-martialled for fleeing the battlefield after seeing his comrades slaughtered during the fight for Bellewaard Ridge in 1915. At the time of his execution, Herbert was only 17 years old, not even legally old enough to be in his regiment. He was nothing more than a terrified teenage boy.

     To the British high command, these executions were necessary in order to make an example out of the condemned to ward off further desertions or other acts of cowardice. The fact that a large number of these men were no doubt suffering from post traumatic stress disorder did little to prevent their fate. In those rare cases when they were actually examined by a doctor, many of the attending physicians were predisposed by their own prejudices to find the accused of sound mind so that they might be executed.

     Nearly a century has passed and we look back on those dark days through 21^st century sensibilities. Today, executing a traumatized solider would be completely unthinkable as would the notion of forcing men to march slowly into machine gun fire. Perhaps if the British high command had paid for their criminal stupidity in these matters by they themselves being shot at dawn, the war would have been conducted very differently.

     In June 2001, a memorial to those 306 souls who were executed was unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. Mrs Gertrude Harris, the daughter of one of the 306 soldiers executed, did the unveiling of the memorial which features 306 posts that list the names of all the soldiers who were shot at dawn.