Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military) by Gordon Corrigan

Author:Gordon Corrigan [Corrigan, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781780225548
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2012-12-19T11:00:00+00:00

shall on conviction by court-martial be liable to suffer death, or such less punishment as is in this Act mentioned.7

‘Misbehaves’ was defined in the Act as meaning that the accused ‘from an unsoldierlike regard for his personal safety in the presence of the enemy, failed in respect of some distinct and feasible duty imposed upon him by a specified order or regulation, or by the well understood custom of the service, or by the requirements of the case, as applicable to the position in which he was placed at the time’.8 Key words in this section are ‘in the presence of the enemy’, which did not mean that the enemy had to be actually within touching distance, but had to be in the vicinity. Thus a man who, on a route march from a billet ten miles behind the lines, ran away when he heard a lorry backfiring could not be charged with cowardice, whereas a man who did the same when he was ordered to leave his trench and advance across no man’s land clearly could be. Despite the Act’s attempt to make the offence unambiguous, what did and what did not constitute cowardice were inevitably subjective, and very difficult to prove. The charge was therefore only preferred in cases where there could be no doubt whatsoever that the man had behaved in what the average soldier would consider to be a cowardly fashion. Cowardice was undoubtedly present on other occasions, but the offences of desertion, quitting a post or casting away arms were much more clear-cut and more likely to be cited.

The figures given above refer to sentences actually carried out. In many cases courts handed down heavier sentences, which were reduced or suspended on their way up the chain of command. Altogether 3,080 death sentences were passed by courts martial on British, Dominion and Colonial officers and soldiers, and to members of native labour corps subject to military law, between the outbreak of war and 31 March 1920 when active service officially ceased. Of these the great majority were passed in France and Belgium, where the bulk of the British and Empire armies were. Death sentences had to be confirmed by the commander-in-chief of the theatre, who held a royal warrant authorising him to do so, and of the 3,080 men sentenced to death only 346 were actually executed: 322 in France and Belgium, five in East Africa, four in Mesopotamia, four in Constantinople, three in Gallipoli, three in Salonika, two in Egypt, one in Italy, one in Palestine and one in Serbia. Nearly ninety per cent of those ordered to be executed had their sentences commuted to penal servitude, imprisonment or field punishment, or suspended. Of the 346 men actually put to death, 291 were of the British army, twenty-five were members of the Canadian forces, five were New Zealanders, four were in the British West Indies Regiment, employed mainly on labouring duties on the Western Front, and the remaining twenty-one were civilians subject to military law, including the Chinese Labour Corps, who exhibited a remarkable tendency to murder one another.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.