Executed at Dawn

by David Johnson

  Once again, it is only too easy to see the part that chance played where executions were concerned. As abhorrent as it might be to some, the death sentence was acceptable according to the practices and norms of those times. If, as a result of his actions, a man had committed a capital offence for which he was subsequently found guilty, then the mandatory sentence, subject to any mitigation, would be death and the sentence only carried out following confirmation by the commander-in-chief. Wider issues of discipline and performance by, for example, the man’s battalion or regiment should not be allowed to influence whether a man was to be shot or not, and yet such considerations were behind such decisions.

  There is something deeply disturbing about this whole subject, even allowing for the norms and practices of those times, but as disturbing as the military executions are, nothing can be done to change the fact that men were shot; undoubtedly the issues can and should be aired and debated if only to achieve greater understanding.

  CONCLUSION

  Having now considered the roles and experiences of those involved and how executions appear to have been organised on the Western Front, together with the campaigns for the abolition of the death sentence and the campaign for pardons for those executed, it seems appropriate to return to the fictional account that opened this book and to add some additional commentary to explain the background behind what was taking place.

  † † †

  The condemned man had spent his last night on this earth (having been informed just a few hours before that his sentence had been confirmed), in a small room that was barely furnished with a table, two chairs and a straw bed (the room, an old quarry office, would have been selected and prepared by the APM). By the light of a guttering candle he had written his final, painful letters to his family and friends and laid out his few personal possessions on the table (to be passed into the chaplain’s safekeeping). The small room was further diminished in size by the presence of two guards who stood with bayonets fixed by the door and the single window to prevent his escape.

  Occasionally through the night, the chaplain came to spend time with him, but otherwise he sat alone with his thoughts. With his letters written he decided that he would spend his last hours awake and so, moving his chair so that he could watch through the window for the approach of dawn, he started on the bottle of rum that had been left on the table (this had been given to him by the army chaplain). Inevitably, he fell asleep only to be roused by the sound of footsteps and voices outside the door.

  It was just before dawn (executions were normally carried out at dawn, not for any legal reason but because it was a quiet time with less likelihood of bystanders) and the sky was starting to get light as a small group of men was marched into an unused quarry. They were then left to stand around smoking and looking anywhere but at each other, not wanting to catch another’s eye, the smoke from their cigarettes and pipes drifting upwards to add to the slight mistiness of the morning. Some stared at the ground, some examined their hands, and some stared into the middle distance. Most definitely, nobody wanted to speak, as they all knew what they were there to do. (The various methods used to select the firing squad were covered in Chapter 3, and so we know now that these men were unfortunate to find themselves in that quarry. It is likely that they had some knowledge of the prisoner and considered the sentence to be harsh.)

  A short distance away stood the lonely figure of the young lieutenant in charge of the firing party, his face pale from the knowledge of what was to come. He smoked ferociously and stamped his feet in an effort to keep warm while he nervously checked and re-checked his service revolver, worried that this morning of all mornings it might jam. (Lewis-Stempel’s book, Six Weeks: The Short and Gallant Life of the British Officer in the First World War, reveals that junior officers faced a life expectancy of just six weeks. This young officer, therefore, was facing an additional and unexpected horror that he could never have previously imagined. Perhaps he had sought the comfort of alcohol the night before, or maybe he had been unlucky enough to have been ordered to dine with his commanding officer, who would have been keen to keep him sober.)

  Two companies of the condemned man’s regiment then marched (carrying their full equipment) silently into the quarry and took up position across its open end, and in response to a shouted order, stood at ease. (These men had been told to parade in full kit at an ungodly hour to witness this event, a public execution, a practice which had been stopped in civilian life in 1868. Many, if not all, would have felt some sympathy for the prisoner.)

  Soon, too soon for some, they heard the approach of a vehicle and a motor ambulance appeared at the edge of the quarry. The members of the firing squad were called to attention, facing away from the stake (surrounded at its base by straw to absorb the blood) that none of them had been able to look at, with their rifles placed on a tarpaulin on the ground behind them.

  The condemned man, thankfully very drunk (he would have been given alcohol and/or some form of sedative by the chaplain or the medical officer; an appropriate question would be to ask whether rendering the prisoner drunk constituted preparing him for a good death, although the effect would have been humane) and, therefore, apparently senseless as to what was about to happen, was all but carried from the back of the ambulance by two military policemen, accompanied by an army chaplain. The man was so drunk that his arms did not need to be tied behind his back or his legs bound at his ankles as he made the short, stumbling walk to the stake, supported by the military policemen. On arrival at the stake, and held between the two beefy redcaps, his arms were momentarily released before being tied behind it, but being drunk he could not feel the rough surface of the wood against the skin of his wrists and hands. A further binding held his ankles to the stake. As the man drunkenly muttered to himself, a blindfold (he was required to wear a blindfold not, as many think, to save him from seeing the firing squad, but instead to prevent them from having to look into his eyes; the blindfold might well have been a gas mask that was put on back to front) was placed over his eyes and the medical officer stepped forward to pin a small, white square of fabric over his heart.

  Meanwhile, the lieutenant had loaded a single round of ammunition into each rifle with the help of an assistant provost marshal, and then mixed them up. As was usually the case, one of the rounds was a blank (we now know that an experienced soldier could tell whether their rifle was the one loaded with a blank by the force of the recoil. It did, though, give some the means of telling themselves, and others if necessary, that they had not fired the fatal shot). When the rifles were ready, the lieutenant took up his position and signalled to the chaplain to begin saying the condemned man’s final prayer. The assistant provost marshal, by a pre-arranged and silent signal, ordered the firing squad to turn, pick up their rifles and prepare to fire, as each worked the bolts of their rifles with trembling hands. At the same time, the watching companies of men were brought to attention. (All who were present would have been tense, and none more so than the assistant provost marshal and the young lieutenant, who would have known that the firing squad represented the weakest part of the execution process. Would they fire and would they fire accurately?)

  The chaplain solemnly intoned ‘Amen’ and turned and walked away with his head bowed. The lieutenant then unsheathed his sword and raised it in the air. Fingers tightened on triggers and when the sword was lowered a thunderous volley rang out. Some bullets, whether deliberately or as a result of incompetence, missed the staked figure completely (some members of the firing squad would have deliberately missed the prisoner, but it is also possible that by having their rifles mixed up they had to use a weapon that was not adjusted to their requirements) and threw up spurts of dust from the quarry wall behind. Some found their target and the condemned man sagged forward, at which point the medical officer approached him to determine whether life had been extinguished. With a look of disgust, he signalled to the lieutenant that the man was still alive. The lieutenant with a trembling hand then
stepped forward to finish him off with a revolver shot through the side of the head.

  The watching companies were swiftly marched out of the quarry, with their sergeants silently defying them from looking anywhere but straight ahead. The firing squad was then brought to attention and marched back to its breakfast, also without a sideways glance at the dead man. The firing squad was followed by the lieutenant, the assistant provost marshal, the military policemen and the medical officer, leaving two ambulance bearers to take down the body, which was then wrapped in a cape ready for burial (the burial site would have been previously identified by the chaplain), and to clear away the bloodied straw from around the stake. When they were finished, they placed the body on a stretcher and carried it to the burial site where the chaplain presided over a short funeral service.

  † † †

  I am certain that, scattered around the country, there are individuals, either family members or friends, who will have documents, photographs, recollections or indeed artefacts, but who may not realise their significance in helping to provide a more complete picture of this troubling aspect of the First World War.

  By way of an example of this, I was talking to a friend when I was writing this book who told me a story about his family in the First World War. His father had a brother called Jack and a sister, known to everyone as Sis, who Uncle Jack’s friend Harold wanted to get to know. Uncle Jack and Harold were sent to the Western Front, but the love-struck young man was desperate to return to London to see the object of his affections for possibly one last time, and so the two of them deserted, probably in about 1916. Somehow they made their way back to London only to be arrested without any hesitation by Uncle Jack’s father who was a police sergeant. Remarkably, with duty taking precedence over family ties, he handed over his son and, as it turned out, the man who would be his future son-in-law to the army, knowing full well the penalty for desertion. Despite this, and once again showing the part that chance played, these two lucky young men were returned to France without charges being brought and went on to survive the war, returning safely to their homes in London – which must have made for an interesting family reunion.

  I was also able to attend an event at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in March 2014, when members of the public were invited to bring along artefacts and stories from family members who had served in the First World War. It was incredible to see the wealth of material that people brought along and the stories they had to share, and I am sure others have similar stories. I hope that this book will encourage those people to come forward and share what they know. In doing so, they may be able to help fill in the gaps where this subject is concerned or indeed correct any mistakes or misrepresentations that I may have inadvertently made.

  † † †

  In my opinion, research will always raise more questions than it answers, particularly when looking at events in the past. Analysis and conclusions must always take account of the standards and practices of those times and this was a point repeatedly made by those who opposed the granting of pardons to the men who had been executed in the First World War. They argued that it was wrong to seek to change history because what had taken place conformed to the procedures of the time, although, in doing so, this appeared to dismiss the long-lasting effect the executions had on families and communities.

  However, there is a counter argument: even if the military executions conformed to the standards and practices of the time, society has now moved on, allowing for a reinterpretation of events and improved analysis that means old facts and situations can be viewed through a better prism. Despite that, the analysis that follows will try to adhere to a formula that is based on an acceptance of the practices of the time, but nevertheless has to take the view that what went on was wrong and that the key players should have known that. In fact, as my analysis progresses, there appears to be a case that the key players, and by that I mean the military hierarchy and politicians, did know and this led to their attempts to hide what had taken place.

  The procedures of the British Army in the First World War were based on a very detailed set of rules and regulations set out in the annual Army Act, military law and the King’s Regulations. My research, although others may subsequently correct me, shows that those rules and regulations seem to peter out once the sentence of death had been confirmed by the commander-in-chief. The notes issued to the army chaplain Edward Guilford in December 1917 are the only detailed example I could find of what might be called a standard operating procedure for the carrying out of an execution, but it has not been possible to establish whether they were meant to apply across the whole army. There are other instructions as to the execution procedure referred to in this book, but they do not contain anywhere near the level of detail contained in the notes to Guilford.

  The consequence of this, as the stories of the men who took part in the executions shows, is that there was considerable variation in the way that executions were conducted. The variations identified concern the size of the firing squad, how it was selected, and how the condemned man’s last moments were managed. Even allowing for the customs of the times, when the British Army decided it must take the life of one of its own, there was no excuse for the execution being conducted in a way that was less humane than it needed to be. It does only take one bullet to kill a man, so why was there such a variation in the size of the firing squad – even allowing for such things as the exigencies of the service, which in time of conflict was more likely to lead to a smaller rather than a larger firing squad? Whether the condemned man was blindfolded for his benefit or for that of the firing squad is an interesting point of debate, but a simple three-cornered bandage, as specified in the notes given to Guilford, should have been the norm. Why then was at least one man made to wear a back-to-front gas mask, which would surely have increased the horror of his last moments, and would have similarly affected the firing squad and others present?

  I felt uncomfortable as I read about military prisoners who had been subjected to Field Punishment No.2 then being used in various capacities during executions, and also recovering wounded men who were deemed unfit to return to active service but fit enough to hold a rifle as a member of a firing squad. Even allowing for the standards of the time, this could never have been an ethical, reasonable or proportionate use of such men.

  In the twenty-first century, where military action is constrained by codes of conduct, serious breaches still occur even in an age of twenty-four-hour news coverage and embedded reporters, meaning these rapidly come to the attention of politicians and the public. I would contend that the lack of a regulatory framework for executions in the First World War meant that questionable things could and did happen, but because of the practices of the times they received no publicity. I could not find one example of a news story from the Western Front, or a piece of film, that was published or shown during the years of the First World War concerning executions, almost certainly because of the censorship regime in place and the willingness of the press to conform. If the public and politicians outside of government had known what was happening, even allowing for society’s support of the death penalty in civilian life, I believe uproar would have ensued – in a democracy, governments cannot take for granted the support of the population.

  Loath as we might be to take criticism from others, some did have more experience of military executions in the First World War than the British. Therefore the observations of a French officer by the name of Massard (Putkowski and Sykes, 1996), who had been present at a number of executions in Vincennes, where some twenty-seven spies and traitors had met their end, would seem to be appropriate and relevant. Massard was present for the executions of Privates Frederick Johnson and Harry McClair of the 2nd Border Regiment on 1 August 1918; they had been sentenced for desertion. Massard’s recollections make a number of interesting observations, including that the men were attended by a ‘huge padre of alcoholic appearance’.

  Massard was horrified b
y the conduct of the executions, with both men ‘tied up from head to toe like sausages’, making it impossible for the men to move. As a result, they looked like shop window mannequins as they were conveyed in a flatbed lorry to the execution site. On their arrival, Massard noted with distaste that the army chaplain ‘mumbled some words and then went off to eat!’ He summed up the execution, conducted by two separate firing squads of six men each, as follows: ‘No military complements, no parade, no music, no march past; a hideous death without drums or trumpets.’

  It is difficult to read Massard’s recollections without feeling a level of bewilderment and anger. These executions took place nine months after Guilford was handed a set of notes setting out the conduct of an execution. The size of the firing squads was different, six men instead of ten, and the condemned men had been bound in such a way that they could not move, while Guilford’s notes speak only of having their wrists bound. The behaviour of the army chaplain is also a cause for concern, as he appeared to display a lack of interest in the proceedings and in the condemned men. Who decided that these executions should be conducted in this way? Although at this distance in time we will never know their names, suspicion must surely fall on either the men’s commanding officer or the APM, as it is hard to see that it could have been anyone else. My feeling is that it was more likely to have been the APM because the APM was likely to have been more experienced regarding executions, and the regimental officers would have been only too happy to leave arrangements to them.

  The death penalty for murder in civilian life was not abolished until the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 suspended its use in England, Wales and Scotland (but not in Northern Ireland), and substituted a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. The Act further provided that if, before the expiry of the five-year suspension, each House of Parliament passed a resolution to make the effect of the Act permanent, then it would finally be abolished. In 1969 the Labour Home Secretary, James Callaghan, proposed a motion to make the Act permanent, which was carried in the House of Commons on 16 December 1969, and a similar motion was carried in the House of Lords on 18 December 1969. The death penalty for murder was abolished in Northern Ireland on 25 July 1973 under the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973. Despite its abolition, there are still many people who would support its restoration.