The simple inscription: “Died defending the honour of his country” would seem all too typical were it not for the date of his death, four months after the end of the war.
The young survivor of the horrors of the Flanders trenches was killed on Welsh soil – at the hands of a fellow Canadian.
A short distance from his grave in the church of St Margaret’s, Bodelwyddan, there is another enigmatic inscription, from the townspeople to mark the circumstances that led to his death. It reads: “Sometime, sometime we’ll understand.”
Tonight a documentary on s4c television in Wales sheds light on a mutiny that shamed the Canadian Army and embarrassed the British government. Even now, more than 80 years later, the relatives of David Gillan are unable to accept his death because their government has never revealed the circumstances.
But researchers have uncovered the events of 4 and 5 March 1919 when thousands of battle-weary veterans turned on their officers. After four years of slaughter, of being shelled and gassed in brutal trench warfare, the frustrations of 20,000 Canadian soldiers boiled over.
The mutineers wanted nothing more than to go home. They could not understand why they were not being shipped home from France and Belgium as were American troops. But a shortage of transport ships and a reluctance by the Allies to demobilise too quickly meant David Gillan and his comrades from the 1st Division were taken to a transit camp at Kinmel Park, North Wales.
Conditions were hard. The winter of 1918−1919 was the coldest in living memory, strikes meant infrequent coal for heat and a flu outbreak was sweeping the globe. Nearly 80 of the soldiers died in a pandemic that killed 20 million worldwide. They were buried in threes in the churchyard.
The discipline, the parades, the route marches, forced on the men by their officers, seemed pointless and rankled with the battle-hardened troops. The bureaucracy of the army was as bad. Men had to fill in 30 documents, answer 363 questions, and collect eight signatures before they could leave.
Five ships had been assigned for them but they were appropriated by Sir Arthur Curry, commander of the Canadian forces, to take home the 3rd Division ...
For the men in Wales, who had fought far longer, it was hard to bear. On 4 March 1919, the insubordination began. As troops in ranks were ordered to start another route march a call came from the back: “Stand packed!” Nobody moved. That night rioting broke out amid temporary buildings known as Tin Town, civilian-owned shops outside the camp. Looting spread to the camp as men drunk on stolen alcohol rampaged through it, smashing canteens, officers’ messes and ymca buildings.
The camp’s senior officer, Colonel Malcolm Colquhoun, ordered beer kegs smashed and moved among the men, trying to stop the rioting. He was treated with respect but the rampage continued. Next morning, military police arrested those they believed to be ringleaders and Colonel Colquhoun ordered all ammunition collected and locked in a bunker. The men stormed the prison and rescued some of their comrades.
Col Colquhoun ordered the rest set free but, without his knowledge, one of his officers, Lieutenant-Colonel J P French, assembled 50 men, armed them and, against orders, gave them ammunition. He marched them to a stockade where a crowd had gathered to await the release and ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge.
Two men were bayoneted to death and the atmosphere was heavy with menace. Officers made themselves scarce as three dozen men marched through the camp, waving a red flag and banging on an improvised drum. The revolt of the masses was then the greatest fear of governments across the Western world, so soon after the bloody revolution in Russia.
A keen new young officer, Lieutenant Gautier, set up armed snatch squads. David Gillan was among them. As they faced the rioters a shot rang out and he fell. The men with him opened fire on the crowd. Two more men died and five were wounded.
David Gillan’s family was robbed of the war veteran’s customary telegram and medal. His mother collapsed when she learnt of his death through newspapers. He had been shot in the back, possibly by another member of the squad.
The Canadian Army did not offer the coroner much help. Forty-one men faced court martial, and 24 were sentenced to between 90 days and 10 years. Most were freed within six months. Years later official military historians sent a questionnaire to the few soldiers still alive. One survivor wrote: “It wouldn’t have happened if the officers had only treated us like men.”
– andrew mullins, “Canada’s Shame Lies Hidden by a Tribute to the Fallen Mutiny Cover-Up,” Independent, June 24, 2000, page 12.
“ … and … that big fucking strike in Winnipeg taking over the whole city in 1919 declaring ourselves a Soviet or something like that … ”
On Armistice Day 1918, Prime Minister Robert Borden and [Trades and Labour Congress] president Tom Moore told the workers the world was going to be a happy place to live in. The troops began to come home at the rate of 3,400 a month. In Canada jobs were not too plentiful. In the winter of 1919 unemployment was increasing in Ontario and the West. Also, the cost of living was rising – workers were complaining it cost twice as much to keep a family as before the war. For their part, the employers and landlords were basking in the sun of big profits [they made during the war]. Working class bitterness grew.
A signal was clashes with police of returned men and soldiers. At Toronto several such demonstrations took place and there were clashes with police. At Winnipeg and Halifax there were similar demonstrations. Unrest grew greater still in 1918 when – Armistice scarce over – a Canadian military expedition was dispatched to Archangel [in Russia]. This was too much. First the authorities asked Canadians to die in a war, with the Russian Tsar as a principal ally, and then asked them to defeat the government which replaced the Tsar.
– charles lipton, The Trade Union
Movement of Canada: 1827−1959
(Toronto: nc Press, 1967), pages 185−86.
Lenin, in a “Letter to the Workers of America”, pleaded for their support: “For every hundred mistakes of ours there are ten thousand great and heroic acts. But if the situation were reversed, if there were ten thousand mistakes to every hundred fine acts, all the same our revolution would be and will be great and unconquerable, because for the first time not a minority, not only the rich, not only the educated, but the real mass of workers themselves begin to build up a new life.”
– david mitchell, 1919: Red Mirage (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), page 43.
Lenin replied to a protest about the Red Terror from Lincoln Steffens, an American member of a 1919 delegation to Moscow, who asked:
“What assurance can you give that the red terror will not go on killing –”
“ ‘Who wants to ask us about our killings?’ ” he demanded, coming erect on his feet with anger.
...
“ ‘Do you mean to tell me that those men who have just generaled the slaughter of seventeen millions of men in a purposeless war are concerned over the few thousands who have been killed in a revolution with a conscious aim – to get out of the necessity of war and – and armed peace.’ ”
– charles l. mee, The End of Order: Versailles 1919 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1980), pages 117−18.
“ … Winnipeg 1919 … the closest we came to doing what Rummie said we gotta do and we did it … which is why you never hear about it cuz we made them look so fucking stupid … ”
[The Western Canada Labour Conference,] attended by 250 delegates representing most of the important union locals between Winnipeg and Victoria … decided on a general strike to begin around June 1, 1919, for these demands:
1. The 6-hour day.
2. Complete freedom of speech and release of political prisoners.
3. Removal of restrictions on working class organizations.
4. Immediate withdrawal of allied troops from Russia.
5. Defeat of allied attempts “to overthrow the Soviet administration in Russia or Germany” …
…
Finally, these resolutions were adopted:
1. Abolition of capitalism: “The aims of labour are abolition of present system of production for profit, and the substitution of production for use”.
2. Working class rule: “The system of [workers’] control by selection of representatives from industry is declared superior to capitalistic parliamentarism” …
3. The November Resolution a Model: … “full accord and sympathy with the aims and purposes of the Russian Bolshevik and German Spartacist revolutions”.
– charles lipton, The Trade Union
Movement of Canada: 1827−1959
(Toronto: nc Press, 1967), pages 188−89.
Middle-class officers [in Winnipeg 1919] were outraged that the Great War Veterans’ Association had taken a pro-strike position. Attempting to play on prejudice against foreign-born workers (“the alien enemy”), against the alleged unconstitutionality of the Strike Committee … these officers brought large numbers of veterans to support the city, provincial and federal governments during the strike.
War hysteria helped them identify “Bolshevists” as allies of “the Hun” and strikers as a tool of a “Red” or “alien” plot to set up a Soviet in Winnipeg. Many of these men served as Citizens’ Committee volunteers or as special police in the next few weeks.
– winnipeg defense committee, Winnipeg 1919: Striker’s Own History of the Winnipeg General Strike, 2nd ed., Norman Penner, ed. (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1976), page 110.
J. S. Woodsworth, United Church Minister, Arrested for Seditious Libel
– june 1919
The Jurors aforesaid do further present:
That J. S. Woodsworth, on or about the month of June in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, in the city of Winnipeg, in the province of Manitoba, unlawfully and seditiously published seditious libels in the words and figures following:
“Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people that widows may be their prey and that they may rob the fatherless.” – “Isaiah”
“And they shall build houses and inhabit them and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build and another inhabit, they shall not plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. ” – “Isaiah”
J. S. Woodsworth later became one of the founders of the Canadian Commonwealth Federation, the predecessor of the New Democratic Party.
– winnipeg defense committee, Winnipeg 1919: Striker’s Own History of the Winnipeg General Strike, 2nd ed., Norman Penner, ed. (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1976), page 208.
“ … not there no more”
My Scottish grandfather Andrew Boyle went missing in the Battle of the Somme. I used to think that his being missing in action was an exceptional occurrence. But in reality, it was the rule not the exception. The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme names 72,090 British and Commonwealth soldiers, all of whom went missing in action during the battle. Of those not lost but injured, sixty per cent of injuries were from shellfire. Being shelled was actually the main occupation of an infantry soldier in the First World War.
– author’s recollection
Almost three-quarters of wounds by the end of the war were shell wounds. Men knew too well how enduring were the effects. The wounds almost always went septic because of the foreign matter taken into the body with the splinters. Low-velocity missiles like these fragments also caused more severe tissue damage than bullets, making a survivor vulnerable to gangrene. Even if a man avoided missiles, the blast would cause death by concussion at ten yards. Kidneys and spleen would be ruptured though there would be no surface marks on the body.
– denis winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers of the Great War (London: Penguin, 1992), page 117.
“ … raise a glass to Rosie Rollins and Rummie Robidou and all those other Bolshevikis … ”
Pardons Could Be Political Minefield
Britain’s plan to pardon 306 executed Commonwealth soldiers from the First World War – including 23 Canadians – poses a political conundrum for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. His government will face pressure to support a gesture that one of the country’s leading military historians has warned is “self-indulgent” revisionism.
It could also shift the blame for the wartime deaths from men found guilty of desertion or cowardice to the officers who commanded their firing squads – including a future Canadian governor-general, George Vanier.
…
Those petitioning for pardons have argued that First World War soldiers condemned for desertion or cowardice were typically suffering from what today is recognized as post-traumatic stress and deserved medical help.
…
Cliff Chadderton, chairman of National Council of Veterans Associations, denounced the decision as one that would cheapen the exploits of Canada’s fallen heroes.
And McGill University professor Desmond Morton, one of the leading chroniclers of Canada’s military history, said the official statement of regret “turned fact into fiction” and unfairly tainted the actions of commanders who legitimately ordered executions.
“They did it for a reason,” Morton said at the time. “They did it to encourage other people to behave. If everybody who decided to flee fled, where would the army be?”
− randy boswell, Montreal Gazette, August 17, 2006, page a2.
Canadian Volunteers Executed During the First World War
Twenty-five Canadians soldiers met death by firing squad. Twenty-three of them were shot because they didn’t want to get killed and the other two were shot for being killers. That’s a fine distinction considering the fact that these executions took place during one of the largest mass slaughters of human beings in recorded history.
Finally, after nearly a hundred years, on December 11, 2011, Veteran Affairs Minister Ron Duhamel announced in the House of Commons that the names of twenty-three executed were added into the First World War Book of Remembrance alongside those of their colleagues, despite protests from some who think that this decision would reflect on the conduct of those responsible for their executions – like military historian Desmond Morton of McGill, who said that the pardons would “unfairly taint the actions of commanders who legitimately ordered executions.”
Professor Morton is right. The official pardons do challenge the legitimacy not only of the officers directly responsible for the executions, but also of the war itself.
In that sense these men did not die in vain.
Note that, of the twenty-five soldiers executed, seven are francophone, reflecting prejudices of the time.
1. William Alexander
10th Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 1st Canadian Infantry Division
Company Quartermaster Sergeant
Shot: October 18, 1917
Desertion – Absent without leave for two days
2. Frederick Stanley Arnold
1 Battery, 1 Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery
Lancer-Bombardier
Shot: July 25, 1916
Desertion – Absent without leave; arrested in plain clothes
3. Fortunat Auger
14th Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 1st Canadian Infantry Division
Private
Shot: March 26, 1916
Desertion – Absent without leave for three days
4. Harold George Carter
73rd Battalion
Private
Shot: April 20, 1917
Desertion – Captured after five days
5. Gustave Comte
22nd Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Canadian Infantry Division
Private
Shot: July 3, 1917
Desertion – Absent for six weeks
6. Arthur Charles Degasse
22nd Canadien-Français Battalion, 5th Brigade,
2nd Canadian Infantry Division
Private
; Shot: March 15, 1918
Desertion – Escaped and was absent for five months before being arrested in Paris
7. Leopold Delisle
22nd Canadien-Français Battalion, 5th Brigade,
2nd Canadian Infantry Division
Private
Shot: May 21, 1918
Desertion – Absent at roll call; he was arrested outside of Arras five days later
8. Edward Fairburn
18th Western Ontario Battalion, 4th Brigade,
2nd Canadian Infantry Division
Private
Shot: March 2, 1918
Desertion – Remained missing for ten months before being arrested just north of Arras
9. Stephen McDermott Fowles
44th Manitoba Battalion, 10th Brigade,
4th Canadian Infantry Division
Private
Shot: June 19, 1918
Desertion – Was not detained for desertion until he gave himself up
10. Maurice John Higgins
1st Western Ontario Battalion, 1st Brigade,
1st Canadian Infantry Division
Private
Shot: December 7, 1916
Desertion – Absent for sixteen days
11. Henry Hesey Kerr
7th British Columbia Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 1st Canadian Division
Private
Shot: November 21, 1916
Desertion – Absent for twenty-four hours
12. Joseph Lalancette
22nd Canadien-Français Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Canadian Infantry Division
Private
Shot: July 3, 1917
Desertion – Absent for one month
13. Come Laliberté
3rd Toronto Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Canadian Infantry Division
Private
Shot: August 4, 1916
Desertion – Arrested after refusing to follow orders
14. Wilson Norman Ling
Bolsheviki: A Dead Serious Comedy Page 6