Executed at Dawn (10 page)

Private Kennedy, like many of his comrades, felt confused, as just eighteen months earlier they had received praise from Sir Douglas Haig, and now the battalion had a stain on its good name when the fact of the execution was publicised on parades and in routine orders.

The death of Private Hunt was reported in the
Manchester Evening News
on 30 November 1916. It said simply that he had died of his wounds.

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Private Stephen Graham, of the Scots Guards, wrote a book in 1919 about his experiences on the Western Front, and included a description of an execution which is thought to be that of Private Isaac Reid. Graham's book starts with the sentence: ‘The sterner the discipline the better the soldier, the better the army', which gives a clue as to his stance where executions were concerned.

Graham's battalion was ordered to parade around three sides of a square to witness this execution, and this necessitated the men getting up an hour earlier to put on their full fighting kit in the dark. Private Reid was in his ‘walking out attire'
and appeared relaxed and free to talk to his friends. Graham wrote that volunteers had been unsuccessfully called for to form the firing squad, which he saw as a sign that Reid was viewed as not having disgraced the regiment. As a result, Reid was to be shot by the battalion's ten snipers and Reid encouraged them,
‘
Don't miss. Fire through my heart.'
Then, having lit a cigarette, he took up his place against the tree that had replaced the more traditional stake. Reid asked not to be blindfolded but his request was turned down. With that, the parade was brought to attention and the snipers took up their positions and a deadly volley ensued.

Perhaps wisely, the officers then had the men sent out on a long route march, which would have had the effect of burning off any anger that they may have had.

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Faced with horror and bloodshed, some men noticed different things where executions were concerned, as was the case with Private Sidney Suffield, who had only just arrived on the Western Front when he was ordered to form part of a firing squad. The man to be executed was Private Frederick Slade of the 2/6th London Regiment. Private Slade had arrived on the Western Front in early 1917 and was a stretcher bearer. However, on 26 October 1917 he had refused to parade prior to the regiment moving up the line and was consequently arrested. At his court martial on 14 November 1917, Private Slade claimed mental incapacity due to his exposure to the horrors of the war, but this was refuted by a captain from the Royal Army Medical Corps, which effectively sealed his fate. He was executed for disobedience on 14 December 1917, and Private Suffield was struck by the way the execution was carried out in complete silence apart from the rifle volley fired by the firing squad.

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Each firing squad had an officer in charge; this was a role that was usually undertaken by junior officers, and was summarised by Crozier (1937) in his usual blunt and forthright manner, when briefing a young subaltern:

‘You will be in charge of the firing party … the men will be cold, nervous and excited. They may miss their mark. You are to have your revolver ready, loaded and cocked; if the medical officer tells you that life is not extinct you are to walk up to the victim, place the muzzle of the revolver to his heart and press the trigger. Do you understand?' ‘Yes Sir' came the quick reply. ‘Right' I add, ‘dine with me in the mess tonight!'

I wanted to keep this young fellow engaged under my supervision until late at night to minimise the chance of his flying to the bottle for support.

One cannot begin to imagine the young subaltern's feelings on hearing those words. Crozier, meanwhile, was intent on ensuring that the subaltern did not turn to alcohol, thereby rendering him unfit to command the firing squad. The young officer would undoubtedly have preferred to get drunk and take the consequences if he had known what he would have to do the next day – he did, in fact, have to complete the sentence on Private James Crozier as the firing squad had failed to do its job.

In the orders relating to the execution for desertion of Private William Roberts, of the 4th Royal Fusiliers on 29 May 1916, Captain H.H. Pridmore, on behalf of the brigadier-general commanding the 9th Infantry Brigade, states, ‘Please choose your officer carefully.'

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The notes given to Guilford outline three parts to the role of the officer in charge of the firing party: namely, loading the rifles, giving the order to fire and, where necessary, administering the coup de grace:

Rifles will be loaded by the Officer i/c Firing Party and will be placed on the ground. One rifle will be loaded with a blank. Safety catches will be placed at safety. Distance from post 5 paces. The Officer will bring with him a loaded revolver.

The Officer, when he sees all the men are steady, will give the word ‘fire'. This is to be the only word of command given after the prisoner leaves the place of confinement.

The Medical Officer will go forward and examine the body. If he considers that life is not extinct he will summon the Officer i/c of the firing party, who will complete the sentence with his revolver.

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To be present when one man was executed can be counted as a rarity, but Captain G. Macready had just joined the 8th Division as a staff officer in April 1915 when a few months later, due to the illness of the APM, he was ordered to officiate at the execution of five men. The executions of Private Bert Hartells, Private Alfred Thompson, Private Ernest Fellowes, Corporal Frederick Ives and Private John Robinson, all of the 3rd Worcestershire Regiment, took place on 26 July 1915, and all had been sentenced for desertion.

The notes to Guilford state that the officer in charge of the firing squad, when the moment came, was to ‘give the word “fire”', and this should be the last word the condemned man ever heard. There were a number of silent variations on this which were thought to be more humane: namely, the lowering of the officer's sword or dropping a handkerchief, but of course those most affected by this were not in a position to supply feedback on the humanity of this action.

Once the volley rang out, the officer would then have to wait for the medical officer to check whether the men had fired accurately and the prisoner was dead. It is hard to imagine what was going through the officer's mind as he waited to hear whether he would be called upon to administer the coup de grâce. On one occasion, Winter writes, ‘A man was shot for cowardice. The volley failed to kill. The officer in charge lost his nerve, turned to the APM and said, “Do your own bloody work, I cannot.”'

The notes to Guilford state that ‘one rifle will be loaded with a blank', but the practice again varied, from one rifle loaded with a blank to only one rifle loaded with live ammunition, and it is likely that a young officer would be guided in that practice by the more experienced APM.

The young officers who were placed in charge of the firing squad were not immune from feelings of sympathy for the condemned man themselves, but were just as powerless to do anything about it. On 9 March 1917 Private John Rogers of the 2nd Battalion of the South Lancashire Regiment was executed having been sentenced for desertion by a firing squad drawn from his comrades under the command of his second lieutenant I.W.F. Agabeg.

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There is little doubt, therefore, that the firing squad was the weakest part of the process, which caused concern for the officers involved. Members of the firing squad, whether individually or collectively, could and did miss their target for a variety of reasons such as incompetence, nerves, unfamiliarity with their allotted rifle or sympathy for the condemned man. It is a matter for debate whether, in the event that you sympathised with the condemned man, it was preferable to miss your target, knowing that if wounded he would still be killed by the officer in charge, or to fire accurately and end their suffering.

Based on today's knowledge of mental trauma, it cannot be a surprise that those men who formed the firing squad would have been affected by what they were being ordered to do. The extent to which the men were affected could be subject to such factors as how they had been selected, their physical and mental condition at the time, and their feelings towards the condemned man, as well as being involved in the execution itself. It took time, though, for the military hierarchy to accept and to acknowledge that mental trauma and shell shock could affect the fighting man, as it even took the medical profession some time to accept this universally. In fairness, there were men who would do whatever was asked of them, and who just got on with it without any discernible effect at the time, though whether and how this might have manifested itself after the war is not known.

In a letter to the
Observer
newspaper on 11 November 2001, Mrs Anne Mary Jones urged that the men of the firing squads, like her father, should also not be forgotten, writing, ‘They joined the army to shoot the enemy, not terrified boys and shell-shocked men. My father was one such and the experience remained the most dreadful thing he ever had to do.'

Despite this, the practice of loading one rifle with blank ammunition could be viewed as an acknowledgement of the potential mental and social impact of being detailed to take part in a firing squad, although, as previously mentioned, in reality the men would have known by the force of the recoil what type of ammunition they had just fired.

Whatever the standards and practices of the time, it does seem strange that the army had not laid down a precise number for the size of the firing squad, which seems to have varied from two up to twenty-five, although the majority do appear to have been closer to the figure stipulated in the note given to Guilford.

Whilst the members of the firing squad could draw some comfort from being only one of a number of men put in the situation of shooting a fellow British soldier – or convincing themselves, if they did not know already, that their rifle had been loaded with blank ammunition – there was no such solace for the invariably young subaltern in charge. They had to stand closer to the condemned man and, if required, would have to administer the coup de grâce, with no chance of arguing that they had fired a blank.

As Lewis-Stempel (2011) sets out in his book, many of the subalterns had enlisted straight from school and, given that the average time a junior officer survived was little more than six weeks, it is awful to think that for some, their time on the Western Front should have included the experience of being an officer in charge of a firing squad.

Whichever side of the conflict they were on, the majority of both officers and men would have put their trust in their God to see them through the war at a time when societal norms meant that an individual had to choose whether to opt out of organised religion rather than to opt in, as is the case today. Few seemed to have questioned how the same God could operate on both sides of the line, perhaps because, for the majority, believing was enough without wondering why or how, but if such questions were raised then their army chaplains were on hand and would, with certainty, have been able to put their minds at rest.

Church parade on a Sunday was a compulsory event for all men, whatever their beliefs or faith. Chaplains from denominations other than Roman Catholic did not tend to go too near the front, leading some soldiers to feel that although they might give a fire-and-brimstone speech exhorting the troops to advance and fight, they did not share the inherent dangers involved. This is captured nicely in a quote from Siegfried Sassoon (Holmes, 2005), who was unhappy with a particular chaplain's choice of words. ‘And now God go with you,' he had told a group of men bound for the front. ‘I will go with you as far as the station.'

Perhaps in this individual's defence, it should be pointed out that Anglican chaplains were expressly instructed to stay away from the front line, although this situation changed in 1916, when they were incorporated into the forward field ambulances and main dressing stations. Julian Bickersteth, who became a
s
enior Anglican chaplain in the 56th (London) Division and was awarded the Military Cross, felt it was important for his credibility with the men to go where they went, as he explained (Lewis-Stempel, 2011): ‘I went out with a wiring party into no-man's land last Friday, got back at 4.00am – a most interesting experience. I was glad of it because I do so dislike the men to have to listen to someone who has not been with them under all conditions.'

Army chaplains, and there were some 3,500 chaplains serving with the British Army by November 1918 (Snape, 2004), were given officer rank and carried out a range of duties from administering to the dead and dying, performing burials, giving troops absolution as they went forward, attempting to maintain morale, and even on occasions censoring letters from the front. Snape makes the point that from January 1916 onwards, part of the chaplains' role was to raise morale and foster discipline amongst the troops and, therefore, it could be argued that the continued execution of offenders after that date represented failure on their part.

They could also be required to attend on those who were to be executed, and the notes given to Guilford in 1917, detailed in Chapter 2, set out the following duties for a chaplain:

Ascertain the prisoner's denomination and arrange for services of a Chaplain. The Chaplain will attend the promulgation of the sentence to the prisoner and will inform the latter when it will be carried out. He may remain with the prisoner up to the time the latter is prepared for execution (ie when the APM enters the place of confinement and demands the prisoner from the guard) and will not be allowed further intercourse with him after that time. He may attend the execution and he will afterwards read the burial service. It is undesirable that he should wear vestments.

In civilian prisons, ministering to the condemned was seen as a highly specialised role, left to prison chaplains or to exemplary pastors, but this was not explicitly the case where military executions were concerned, although it does appear to have been devolved to those who were more experienced. Snape observes that because of the numbers of army chaplains on the Western Front and the small number of men executed, the number of chaplains who were called upon to attend executions was, in turn, quite small. Many death sentences – Snape says 89 per cent – were commuted at the eleventh hour, meaning that more clergy would have experienced preparing a man for death whose sentence was subsequently commuted, than were involved in an actual execution.