Fresh call to pardon "cowards"

[JoFerret]

http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=463972004

DEFENCE chiefs were last night under renewed pressure to pardon hundreds of soldiers executed for cowardice during the First World War after it emerged that several officers were spared the firing squad for the same offence.

New research into the sentences meted out during the 1914-18 conflict has established that at least 15 officers, including one Scot, escaped execution. There is, however, no documented case of an ordinary soldier being spared, and more than 300 were executed.

....

But the new development also blows a hole in the government’s long-term insistence that they could not justify retrospective pardons because such a dramatic judgment would be unprecedented.

Campaigners, who claim many of the executed men were suffering from crippling conditions such as shellshock, which was not recognised as an illness by army commanders, maintain the disclosures would bolster their demands for justice on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the war.

"There is no logical basis for the British government to claim its hands are tied on this issue," said Peter Mulvany, of the Irish section of the Shot at Dawn (SAD) campaign, which has waged a lengthy battle to clear the names of more than 300 soldiers, including 39 Scots.
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[markses]

1. A great story from Robert Graves' "Good-Bye to All That"

"Two young miners, in another company, disliked their sargeant, who had a down on them and gave them all the most dirty and dangerous jobs. When they were in billets he crimed them for things they hadn't done; so they decided to kill him. Later, they reported at battalion Orderly Room and asked to see the Adjutant. This was irregular, because a private is forbidden to address an officer without an N.C.O of his own company acting as a go-between. The Adjutant happened to see them and asked: 'Well, what is it you want?'

Smartly slapping the small-of-the-butt of their sloped rifles, they said: 'We've come to report, Sir, that we're very sorry, but we've shot our company sargeant major.'

The Adjutant said: 'Good heavens, how did that happen?'

'It was an accident, Sir.'

'What do you mean, you damn fools? Did you mistake him for a spy?'

'No, Sir, we mistook him for our platoon sargeant.'

So they were both court-martialled and shot by a firing squad of their own company against the wall of a convent in Bethune. Their last words were the Battalion rallying-cry: 'Stick it, the Welsh!'"

[JoFerret]

2. I love that Graves mordant wit.

what an outsdtanding memoir that is. Should be required reading for all serving soldiers. Along with Sassoon.

Here's another story:

<<Most of the three million British troops soon knew they faced almost certain death on the battlefield. Day after day they would witness the annihilation of their friends, never knowing if or when they would be next. On some occasions whole battalions were wiped out, leaving just a handful of confused, terrified men. But those who shirked their responsibility soon learned there was no way out of the horror - if they ran from German guns, they would be shot by British ones.

Private Thomas Highgate was the first to suffer such military justice. Unable to bear the carnage of 7,800 British troops at the Battle of Mons, he had fled and hidden in a barn. He was undefended at his trial because all his comrades from the Royal West Kents had been killed, injured or captured. Just 35 days into the war, Private Highgate was executed at the age of 17.

Many similar stories followed, among them that of 16-year-old Herbert Burden, who had lied that he was two years older so he could join the Northumberland Fusiliers. Ten months later, he was court-martialled for fleeing after seeing his friends massacred at the battlefield of Bellwarde Ridge. He faced the firing squad still officially too young to be in his regiment.>>