Thousands of British soldiers lie in cemeteries clustered around the battle sites of the First World War. Many of these volunteered for war, not realising trench warfare would be far from a grand adventure, nor that they would never return home. But not all of these were killed by the enemy. Over 3,000 soldiers were sentenced to death by Army Law, for desertion or other petty crimes, and more than 300 of these were blindfolded and shot by their own battalion. Many of the 'men' were still teenagers, and faced judgement in a time where shell shock was seen as an excuse for cowardice. They were branded traitors, their deaths covered up and their names forbidden from memorials. Only in 2006, nearly 100 years later, were they finally pardoned. Robert King was part of the campaign to pardon these forgotten men. Here he touches on the lives of fifteen Welshmen history has tried to ignore, and explores what it really meant to be led out and shot at dawn.
Thousands of British soldiers lie in cemeteries clustered around the battle sites of the First World War. Many of these volunteered for war, not realising trench warfare would be far from a grand adventure, nor that they would never return home. But not all of these were killed by the enemy. Over 3,000 soldiers were sentenced to death by Army Law, for desertion or other petty crimes, and more than 300 of these were blindfolded and shot by their own battalion. Many of the 'men' were still teenagers, and faced judgement in a time where shell shock was seen as an excuse for cowardice. They were branded traitors, their deaths covered up and their names forbidden from memorials. Only in 2006, nearly 100 years later, were they finally pardoned. Robert King was part of the campaign to pardon these forgotten men. Here he touches on the lives of fifteen Welshmen history has tried to ignore, and explores what it really meant to be led out and shot at dawn.
Shot at Dawn: The Fifteen Welshmen executed by the British Army in the First World War
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Overview
Thousands of British soldiers lie in cemeteries clustered around the battle sites of the First World War. Many of these volunteered for war, not realising trench warfare would be far from a grand adventure, nor that they would never return home. But not all of these were killed by the enemy. Over 3,000 soldiers were sentenced to death by Army Law, for desertion or other petty crimes, and more than 300 of these were blindfolded and shot by their own battalion. Many of the 'men' were still teenagers, and faced judgement in a time where shell shock was seen as an excuse for cowardice. They were branded traitors, their deaths covered up and their names forbidden from memorials. Only in 2006, nearly 100 years later, were they finally pardoned. Robert King was part of the campaign to pardon these forgotten men. Here he touches on the lives of fifteen Welshmen history has tried to ignore, and explores what it really meant to be led out and shot at dawn.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750958820 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 10/06/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 128 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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Shot at Dawn
The Fifteen Welshmen Executed by the British Army in the First World War
By Robert King
The History Press
Copyright © 2014 Robert King,All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5882-0
CHAPTER 1
The Months Leading Up To The War
The census figures for Wales in 1911 record a population of 2.4 million. The vast majority of the male population would have been employed in heavy industry, including agriculture. When war was declared in 1914, the government launched a patriotic plea asking for volunteers – usually called Kitchener Volunteers – to go to war for king and country. There was no conscription until 1917.
Seemingly bent on conflict, Germany had seriously remilitarised its army during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II and started to gather its forces on the border with Belgium. Observing nations concluded that an invasion was imminent, despite Belgium being protected by a guarantee of neutrality. The British Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, instructed the Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, to issue an ultimatum: if Germany did not give Belgium an assurance of safety then Britain would intervene on Belgium's side and war would be declared. At that time, the British Empire was still a respected force in the world.
Edward Grey's missive stated that the deadline for this 'assurance of safety' would expire at 11 p.m. on 4 August 1914 which, records tell us, was a hot Bank Holiday weekend. No assurance was received from Germany, so Britain declared war and the bloody conflict began.
In Wales, 275,000 men signed up during the four years of war, including those conscripted after 1917. Of these, 35,000 were killed and many more were physically or mentally disabled, and left with little or no support.
David Lloyd George was keen to see men from Wales offering themselves as soldiers. To encourage friends to join in groups, Pals Battalions were established, which kept men from the same area together. However, this meant that they also died together – thus the large number of names on war memorials that populate almost every village. This idea was not propagated during the Second World War, when efforts were made for fighting men from same area to be kept apart, particularly if they were related.
With patriotic fervour sweeping the whole of Britain in the days and weeks following the declaration of war, men in their thousands volunteered. The idea that it would all be over by Christmas was bandied about and it was seen as an adventure, an attractive change from the norm. The actual realities of what they were signing up to came later, by which point there was no backing out of the commitment.
In Wales the majority of the male working population was employed in coal mines, quarries and agriculture. The wages were poor and living conditions were sparse, and so many young men willingly took the king's shilling. Women took over many of the duties previously performed by the menfolk and children were encouraged to help the war effort by collecting conkers.
There was considerable excitement for those queued up at the recruitment offices. It was difficult to resist the accusing finger pointing out from the War Office posters, which proclaimed 'Your Country Needs You', or to ignore the undercurrent of encouraging young women to present those men still not in khaki with a white feather – the symbol of a coward. The pressure was extreme, as was described by Private Rhys Davies of Carmarthen. I spoke with Mr Davies in 1973:
My brother, Gareth, had signed up immediately when they asked for volunteers. He was four years older than me and couldn't wait to go. We were both farm labourers working on different farms just outside the town. I remember Gareth saying when he told my mother he was going that he'd been to Swansea once, now he had the chance to go overseas. I was a bit jealous; although I looked older than my seventeen years I was resigned to wait. That was until I was walking in the town one night and this girl put a white feather into the top pocket of my coat.
'A Welsh coward,' she said. She was with five other girls who all giggled and made fun of me. I went bright red with embarrassment and stuttered I'm only seventeen.
'That's what they all say,' she added and tried to give me another feather. She must have had a load of them in her handbag.
I was shaking with temper, turned and ran home. That white feather business was evil.
Anyway, the following day was the market and I knew I'd be able to have an hour off but I told no one what I was going to do.
When I got to the recruiting office there was a queue, about five or six of us. I knew a couple who had been friends of my brother but no one said anything. I think everyone was a little nervous or so excited they couldn't talk.
The sergeant called my name and took details. I told him I was born in 1897; it was a lie, I was born in 1898. Then a doctor examined me and that was it. I was Private Rhys Davies.
I hurried back to the market and helped my employer to take some sheep home then I told him that I had joined the army and wouldn't be working at the farm again. He went quiet. Then, completely out of character he said: 'Good boy,' and he gave me the money I was owed plus a ten shilling note. I was shocked at that and gave the ten bob to my mam.
It was those girls and the white feather that done it.
Private Bryn Thomas from Tonypandy explained to me in the late 1960s that he was 28 and home on hospital leave in November 1915, when he was subjected to the humiliation of having a white feather handed to him 'by a woman old enough to be my mother':
I joined the army in 1912 to do something different really. I'd worked in the pits for a couple of years and got danted with it so I signed on.
When the war broke out then I found myself in Ypres, first off digging trenches. And then as the weather turned and things started getting nasty with the Germans those trenches got wetter and wetter, muddier and muddier until even our bolt holes got uncomfortable.
One night I was huddled deep in my hole, trying to snuggle into my clothes to keep warm, although they were lice ridden you get used to it, when I got a bloody rat bite on my leg. It pinched so much that I put my hand down straight away and caught the bloody thing and squeezed the life out of it. Working in the mines an old collier had once told me that a female rat's bite is worse that a male's so I turned it up and checked what it was. It was a male. But the wound swelled up and I was sent to the dressing station. From there they sent me home for a couple of weeks to give it time to heal. It was nice to get home.
Some soldiers liked to keep the uniform on even when on leave. I didn't, soon as I got in to the house it was a hot bath in front of the fire and my own clothes.
I went down to Pontypridd to see my uncle a few days later and walking to a pub this woman stopped me and said I should be ashamed that I wasn't at the front. I was shocked at this total stranger and then she gave me a feather. Uncle was in a temper. He ripped it from me and argued with her. A few people had stopped at the raised voices. 'The man's a regular,' he shouted and threw it on the ground. 'Come on, Private,' he said, 'a pint, enough of this nonsense.' The woman, red faced, hurried away.
Private Colin Phillips from Ruthin related his experience with a stoic nature when he agreed to talk to me in 1974:
I'd survived the Battle of Mametz Wood so anything anyone ever said to me after that didn't matter much. Yes, a man, a minster of religion in fact, challenged me when I was on a leave. I was in my civilian clothes and he came on to me asking me if I felt ashamed. I knew what he meant and I treated him with distain. I didn't say anything. I just looked at him with contempt. His white dog collar glistening, clean. I thought of the filth and carnage I'd been through and walked away. I never cared much for religion or anything after that. I even struggled with it when attending funerals in later years. I shouldn't consider them all like that man who condemned me without knowledge. But there you are, as my mother always said, there's good and bad wherever you look, everywhere.
The above examples illustrate the emotional pressure placed on young men. The white feather syndrome was encouraged by government ministers to leave the public in no doubt that young men not in uniform were to be branded cowards.
In Wales, as in other parts of Great Britain, the conditions for most working-class men were very poor. In South Wales the mining industry was the major employer – a dangerous occupation which little changed after the Great War. The years between 1894 and 1914 recorded 1,275 fatalities in the South Wales coalfield. A conservative figure, it does not feature smaller incidents where only one or two miners lost their lives. The outbreak of war came a little under a year after the disaster at the Universal Colliery in Senghenydd on 14 October 1913 in which over 400 miners died, so it is unsurprising that joining the army was attractive; although miners worked in an exempt industry they volunteered in their thousands. They were sought by the Ministry of War because of their ability to dig tunnels in a safe and methodical manner, and the tunneling under no-man's-land towards the German lines was principally carried out by those miners with coal-mining experience. Many would have been from South Wales.
Quarry workers in North Wales endured equally appalling and dangerous conditions and farmhands toiled in humbling and exhausting circumstances. Altogether, 275,000 men either volunteered or were conscripted from Wales in the First World War. Of these, 35,000 lost their lives on the Western Front, with fifteen men being shot at dawn following court martial. Four were members of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers; three belonged to the South Wales Borderers; six in the Welsh Regiment; one in the Cheshire Regiment; and one, an officer, in the Royal Naval Division. Two Welsh regiments had no members executed: the Monmouthshire and the Welsh Guards.
The figures for British soldiers from the Home Nations who faced a firing squad (allowing for those who served in another country's regiment) were: 24 Irishmen, 43 Scotsmen and 209 Englishmen.
Under the authority of the Army Act, offences carried more severe punishments when a soldier was on active service. The generals felt the only way to maintain essential discipline was by imposing severe penalties.
CHAPTER 2The King's Shilling
Taking the king's shilling committed a soldier to live under the authority of the Army Act, which enabled the military to enforce punishments for offences in the field that did not apply in civilian life. Whether the reality of the strictures of the Army Act was thoroughly digested by the willing volunteer is not known as many of the oral statements we have at our disposal are reflective – their attitudes may have changed since they presented themselves at a recruitment office. It is well known that recruitment officers were generally vague in their definition of the procedures of recruitment.
Many young men lied about their age, with some as young as 14 signing up. There were many 'men' signing up who were mere boys, but if the heart was willing, etc., then a blind eye was turned – the numbers game was paramount. The Army Act protected the officers in this respect: the age of every recruit was taken to be accurate, and so what the young men said was just taken to be true.
The clamour for excitement, the show of bravado and the belief that it would be over by Christmas shows on the faces of the young men captured on film footage as they stand on board ships heading for France, the faces smiling and anticipating the forthcoming adventure. Many leaned against the rails of the ships' decks, waving to whomsoever and not realising what lay in store.
Reality proved their expectations far from the truth, and some grew disobedient or resorted to desperate measures to escape. Death by firing squad accounted for 349 soldiers during the Great War, found guilty of committing the offences of:
Desertion
Striking an officer
Cowardice
Sleeping on duty
Leaving their post Mutiny
Casting away arms Murder
Disobedience
Rape
Through the duration of the war there were 750,000 Allied soldiers killed (an average of 400 a day) and more than 1,500,000 wounded. For the sake of example, there were more than 3,000 men condemned to death for contravening the regulations of the Army Act, but only slightly more than 10 per cent were carried out.
It seems a tiny percentage of the war's losses, but the soldier's realisation that in trying to escape going over the top he was going to be put to death in the morning by members of his own side would have been devastating. Witnesses to those dark moments in British history often paint a picture of an immense stoical power.
A medical officer offered one man a heavy drink of spirits in an effort to numb his mind, minutes before he was led out to face his end; the response was that he'd never taken hard drink in his life and he saw little point in starting now. A minority refused to be blindfolded and chose to face the wrath of the firing party – one chaplain recorded that he had never seen a braver soldier facing his death. Alternatively, some soldiers were injected with morphine to dull their senses. Not all were so stoic, often in the case of the very young men, the youngest being 16 years old: Private Highgate of the Irish was 16 years and 8 months old. Soldiers such as he would have volunteered by lying about their age, again having been caught up in the excitement of adventure, and the prospect of facing a firing party would have been horrific. One pathetically cried out as he was being tied to the firing post, 'What will my mam say?'
Knowing that executions were carried out in civilian life as an example to others – such as hanging men found guilty of committing capital offences – but were not an effective deterrent, it is tempting to ask why firing squad was used at all. But in the context of the time, the army was still operating under the rules of the late nineteenth century when life was considered cheap.
Considering the stresses that new recruits and indeed regular soldiers were experiencing with trench warfare, many of the 3,000 men found guilty of offences carrying the death penalty would have been suffering from psychological conditions not recognised by medical practitioners of the time. Although shell shock was documented, it was not considered a mitigating factor in any defence that was offered.
Contrary to the legal requirements in civilian life – of innocent until proven guilty – the army followed the mantra of guilty unless proven innocent. The trial process was haphazard, not so much for prosecuting officers but very much for defendants. Many men facing the life or death decisions of the prosecutors were often unrepresented, or at best represented by men who were not equipped with knowledge of presenting mitigation. This knowledge, often called a 'soldier's friend', was not so much denied as not requested by the soldiers who were, no doubt, in ignorance of its existence.
Until 1915 a defendant would plead guilty, which sealed his fate. This was only to change with the case of Private Joseph Byers, a Kitchener volunteer aged 17 who had joined the 1/R Scots Fusiliers. He made a 'guilty' plea of Attempting to Desert at his Court Marshal, had no defence and claimed he did not know what he was doing. He was executed for desertion on 6 February 1915 and was buried at Locre Chyd. Following this case, all soldiers facing a court martial had a 'not guilty' plea automatically imposed.
Some defendants offered up in mitigation that he had been shell-shocked, 'a shell went off next to me and my mind went strange' or 'I couldn't see or think after a shell went off behind me'. If this was in the hope that a medical examination would find that he was not mentally in charge of his faculties and so a doctor would support him, his hopes would have been dashed when he was rudely made aware that doctors would be of no support. One doctor recorded that he found such people repugnant and cowardly and 'I hate his sort'. The soldiers soon found themselves nearly blindfolded and alone.
If the prosecutors found the defendant guilty but made recommendations that the death penalty should not be carried out, and this was supported by the commander in chief – most notably Sir Douglas Haig – the soldier was informed of his punishment. He knew his fate relatively quickly. But if the death penalty was approved, the man would sit in his cell or holding place quite ignorant as to what was to become of him. When the orders came through (and the length of time from the trial's end and conformation that the man was to be shot varies greatly from case to case) the soldier was informed on the evening before his execution on the parade ground. He would then have been ushered away to his cell.
The condemned would be attended during that night by the chaplain, who did in some cases help with letter writing and offering what comfort he could.
The next task for the officer in charge was to assign men to the firing squad or party. These were usually made up of six men, although some accounts record as many as twelve this would certainly have been unusual. It must have been horrendous to be instructed to carry out this duty; in some cases the members of the firing party would have known the condemned. To be involved in a firing party would often leave a mark on a man who had knowingly shot someone who had been fighting on the Allied side. Members of the battalion would often be forced to observe the event, to remind them of the consequences of their actions.
If members of the firing party did not kill the condemned man outright and the victim was left wounded and not dead, then the officer in charge would move forward. After the medical officer had pronounced that the man was still alive, the officer would produce a pistol and shoot the victim in the head. It is easy to see why Sub Lt Edwin Dyett was so anxious that his firing squad shot straight.
The body was then placed in a sheet and taken away and buried, sometimes in a makeshift grave, which was marked for reburial in a cemetery later. On some occasions the original grave's location was lost and then the name was just commemorated on one of the remembrance walls.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Shot at Dawn by Robert King. Copyright © 2014 Robert King,. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title,Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Foreword by Rt Hon. Peter Hain, MP for Neath,
Preface,
Executions of Welsh Soldiers and Those Who Served in a Welsh Regiment in Date Order Quotations,
1 The Months Leading Up to the War,
2 The King's Shilling,
3 Executed for Leaving His Post,
4 Executed for Desertion,
5 The Edwin Dyett Case,
6 Executed for Committing Murder,
7 Granting Posthumous Pardons to the 306 Executed Soldiers,
8 The Firing Party,
9 The Following Years,
Executed Soldiers in Regimental Order,
Burial Places or Commemorations of the Executed Soldiers,
Bibliography,
Copyright,