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British Army Chaplains and Capital Courts-Martial in the First World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Michael Snape
Michael Snape*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Of all the dark legends which have arisen out of the British experience of the First World War, perhaps none is more compelling than the fate of more than three hundred British, Dominion and Colonial soldiers who were tried and executed for military offences during the course of the conflict. Controversial at the time, these executions were the subject of much debate and official scrutiny in the inter-war period and, even today, the subject continues to have a bitter and painful resonance. Led by the Shot at Dawn Campaign, pressure for the rehabilitation of these men continues and the case for a millennium pardon was marked in June 2001 by the opening of an emotive memorial to them at the National Memorial Arboretum near Lichfield. However, this paper is not concerned with the justice of the proceedings which led to the deaths of these men. Whether due legal process was followed or whether those executed were suffering from shell shock are difficult and probably unanswerable questions which I will leave to legal and to military historians. Instead of investigating the circumstances of the condemned, this paper turns the spotlight onto the circumstances and attitudes of men whose presence at military executions was as inevitable as that of the prisoner or the firing squad; namely, the commissioned chaplains of the British army.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 40: Retribution, Repentance, and Reconciliation , 2004 , pp. 357 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

References

1 Cf. the website www.shotatdawn.org.uk for more information (consulted 6 December 2002). For an appraisal of the Shot at Dawn campaign, see Bond, B., The Unquiet Western Front: Britain’s Role in Literature and History (Cambridge, 2002), 82–4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For more general discussions of the military and legal issues surrounding these executions see Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson, Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War (London, 2001); William Moore, The Thin Yellow Line (London, 1974, repr. 1999); Anthony Babington, For the Sake of Example: Capital Courts-Martial 1914–1920 (London, 1983; 2nd edn, 1993); Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes, ShotatDawn: Executions in World War One by Authority of the British Army Act (Barnsley, 1989; 2nd edn, London, 1992); Leonard Sellers, For God’s Sake Shoot Straight: the Story of the Court Martial and Execution of Tem porary Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Leopold Arthur Dyett, Nelson Battalion, 63rd (RN) Division during the First World War (London, 1995); Gerard Oram, Worthless Men: Race, Eugenics and the Death Penalty in the British Army during the First World War (London, 1998).

3 Potter, Harry, Hanging in Judgment: Religion and the Death Penalty in England (London, 1993), 107 Google Scholar.

4 The War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War 1914–1920 (London, 1992), 649.

5 Royal Commission on Capital Punishment 1949–53, Report: Presented to Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, September 1953, ed. Ernest Arthur Gowers (London, 1953, 2nd edn., 1965), Appendix 3.

6 Crozier, F. P., The Men I Killed (London, 1937, repr. Bath, 1969), 51, 219 Google Scholar.

7 Steuart, R. H. J., March, Kind Comrade (London, 1931), 94–5 Google Scholar.

8 Graham, S., A Private in the Guards (London, 1919; 2nd edn, 1928), 159–61 Google ScholarPubMed; Brown, M., Tommy Goes To War (London, 1986), 128 Google Scholar.

9 Corns and Hughes-Wilson, Blindfold and Alone, 85–104; Peaty, J., ‘Capital Courts-Martial during the Great War’, in Bond, Brian et al., eds, “Look to Your Front’: Studies in the First World War by The British Commission for Military History (Staplehurst, 1999), 89–104, 92, 98 Google Scholar.

10 Babington, For the Sake of Example, 59–60; Crozier, The Men Killed, 50.

11 Babington, For the Sake of Example, vi.

12 Ibid., 59–60.

13 Ibid., 57–8.

14 Corns and Hughes-Wilson, Blindfold and Alone, 103.

15 Graham, A Private, 161–2.

16 War Office, Statistics, 649; Peaty, ‘Capital Courts-Martial’, 92.

17 In fact, another soldier of the 3rd Division was shot in the intervening period. See Putkowski and Sykes, Shot at Dawn: Executions, 134, 294.

18 The Bickersteth Diaries 1914–1918, ed. John Bickersteth (London, 1996), 189–94, 224–25; Catholic Soldiers by Sixty Chaplains and Many Others, ed. C. Plater (London and New York, (919), 124–8.

19 Babington, For the Sake of Example, 5 8–9.

20 Steuart, March, Kind Comrade, 95–6.

21 Imperial War Museum, Department of Documents, 77/106/1, Revd M. W. Murray, note dated 20 October 1920; Adler, M., British Jewry Book of Honour (London, 1922; repr. Aldershot, 1997), 45 Google Scholar.

22 War Office, Statistics, 649.

23 Steuart, March, Kind Comrade, 97–9.

24 Bickersteth Diaries, 189–91.

25 Ibid, 189–90; Putkowski and Sykes, Shot at Dawn: Executions, 178.

26 Potter, Hanging in Judgment, 112–13.

27 Ibid.

28 Catholic Soldiers, 124; Bickersteth Diaries, 190.

29 Catholic Soldiers, 125–8. For the case of a Jewish prisoner recorded as an Anglican, see Adler, British Jewry, 45.

30 Bickersteth Diaries, 194.

31 Imperial War Museum, Sound Archive, 4770/1, Canon L. Martin Andrews.

32 Bickersteth Diaries, 193.

33 Putkowski and Sykes, Shot at Dawn: Executions, 224.

34 Bickersteth Diaries, 224.

35 Ibid., 225.

36 Ibid.

37 ‘A Chaplain’, For the Front: Prayers and Considerations for Catholic Soldiers (Market Weighton, 1918), 31–2.

38 See, for example, Fr Benedict Williamson’s account of the last hours and execution of Private Patrick Murphy of the Machine Gun Corps on 12 September 1918 in Williamson, B., Happy Dap’ in France and Flanders with the 47th and 49th Divisions (London, 1921), 157–60 Google Scholar.

39 The Tablet, 14 February 1920, 210. Spellings and punctuation as printed.

40 Babington, For the Sake of Example, 82–95, 175–87.

41 Steuart, March, Kind Comrade, 99, 103.

42 Crozier, The Men I Killed, 228.

43 Ibid., 219. For a further account of the trial and execution of Private James Crozier, see Crozier, F. P., A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land (London, 1930), 81–4 Google Scholar.