way right that men should have been tricked into becoming part of a firing squad, but it happened. There does not seem to have been a set basis for selecting those to be in a firing squad and this, together with an abdication of responsibility by some officers to their sergeants, gave rise to opportunities for abuse in the form of favouritism, spite and the settling of scores.
More disturbing, though, is the thought that men, whose only offence had been to be found drunk, and who were typically subject to twenty-eight days’ field punishment, were being ordered to form a firing squad. This seems to add an extra tier of punishment that is well outside what was laid down in military law.
Military law, as it applied in the First World War, makes it clear that any field punishment should not be inflicted in such a way as to leave any permanent mark on the offender. When this particular regulation was drafted, the permanent mark being referred to would have been physical, because it was later in the war that mental trauma was accepted by the military. Taking part in an execution as a member of a firing squad would have had a psychological effect on those involved, which was against military law, was unethical and which was out of all proportion to any offences the soldier may have committed.
It seems equally remarkable that men who were recovering from wounds but were not yet deemed fit enough to be returned to their battalion or regiment should have been considered fit enough to participate as a member of a firing squad. This seems to add a further level of trauma to men who had already been through so much. Even allowing for the standards and norms of the time, 100 years later this still seems callous, unethical and simply wrong.
Amongst their comrades there was indeed a degree of empathy for those sentenced to death, and in many cases undisguised sympathy based upon a greater understanding of what had driven a man to desert as a result of their shared service and experiences. It would, however, be wrong to claim that all soldiers, whilst they might empathise with the condemned man, automatically sympathised with them, because many were viewed as cowards who deserved nothing less than being shot. This was a point that was made in Parliament during a debate on First World War soldiers (Pardons) on 18 January 2006 by Keith Simpson, MP, who had interviewed, in his words, several hundred veterans (Hansard, 18 January 2006):
One question, among many others, that I invariably asked them concerned their attitude towards the men who were executed in the First World War for desertion, cowardice and so on. The survivors of that war had an ambivalent attitude towards those executions. That is borne out by the archives at the Imperial War Museum, whether oral or written. It was possible to find large numbers of men who, at the time and in their old age, regarded the executions as wrong, vindictive and not achieving their objective of deterring people from running away, but equally I found large numbers of veterans who were bitter. They might not necessarily condone the fact that ultimately the men were executed, but they were bitter that some men decided to abscond and, as they saw it, did not do their duty and let their muckers down. That is an equally balanced view.
While some officers might maintain that the morale of the men selected to form a firing squad remained unaffected, this view was not necessarily shared by the men themselves, and the next chapter will consider this further from the viewpoint of those in the firing squad.
3
THE FIRING SQUAD
A Royal Commission of 1949, which examined a variety of execution methods for their decency and humanity, concluded that the firing squad did not possess even the first requirement of efficiency – namely, the certainty of causing immediate death. Dr John Collees went further in an article in the Observer on 25 April 1995, writing, ‘Dying from gunshot wounds effectively means
More disturbing, though, is the thought that men, whose only offence had been to be found drunk, and who were typically subject to twenty-eight days’ field punishment, were being ordered to form a firing squad. This seems to add an extra tier of punishment that is well outside what was laid down in military law.
Military law, as it applied in the First World War, makes it clear that any field punishment should not be inflicted in such a way as to leave any permanent mark on the offender. When this particular regulation was drafted, the permanent mark being referred to would have been physical, because it was later in the war that mental trauma was accepted by the military. Taking part in an execution as a member of a firing squad would have had a psychological effect on those involved, which was against military law, was unethical and which was out of all proportion to any offences the soldier may have committed.
It seems equally remarkable that men who were recovering from wounds but were not yet deemed fit enough to be returned to their battalion or regiment should have been considered fit enough to participate as a member of a firing squad. This seems to add a further level of trauma to men who had already been through so much. Even allowing for the standards and norms of the time, 100 years later this still seems callous, unethical and simply wrong.
Amongst their comrades there was indeed a degree of empathy for those sentenced to death, and in many cases undisguised sympathy based upon a greater understanding of what had driven a man to desert as a result of their shared service and experiences. It would, however, be wrong to claim that all soldiers, whilst they might empathise with the condemned man, automatically sympathised with them, because many were viewed as cowards who deserved nothing less than being shot. This was a point that was made in Parliament during a debate on First World War soldiers (Pardons) on 18 January 2006 by Keith Simpson, MP, who had interviewed, in his words, several hundred veterans (Hansard, 18 January 2006):
One question, among many others, that I invariably asked them concerned their attitude towards the men who were executed in the First World War for desertion, cowardice and so on. The survivors of that war had an ambivalent attitude towards those executions. That is borne out by the archives at the Imperial War Museum, whether oral or written. It was possible to find large numbers of men who, at the time and in their old age, regarded the executions as wrong, vindictive and not achieving their objective of deterring people from running away, but equally I found large numbers of veterans who were bitter. They might not necessarily condone the fact that ultimately the men were executed, but they were bitter that some men decided to abscond and, as they saw it, did not do their duty and let their muckers down. That is an equally balanced view.
While some officers might maintain that the morale of the men selected to form a firing squad remained unaffected, this view was not necessarily shared by the men themselves, and the next chapter will consider this further from the viewpoint of those in the firing squad.
3
THE FIRING SQUAD
A Royal Commission of 1949, which examined a variety of execution methods for their decency and humanity, concluded that the firing squad did not possess even the first requirement of efficiency – namely, the certainty of causing immediate death. Dr John Collees went further in an article in the Observer on 25 April 1995, writing, ‘Dying from gunshot wounds effectively means
Similar Books
