Wednesday, February 20, 2013

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 21st 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.

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