The Last Campaign of World War One: 1990–2006: The Fight to Win Pardons for Those Executed

By David Johnson

Followers of the Brexit saga will recognise the following as the establishment’s way of blocking something that it does not want and does not agree with – stifling stories, hiding its mistakes through methods ranging from leaked stories to the press, prevarication, using procedures to delay and stifle initiatives, utilising precedents established hundreds of years ago, making things seem more difficult than they really are, embargoes on documents and records, use of “Project Fear” and even destroying records.
They were equally familiar to those who for sixteen years battled to win pardons for 306 soldiers executed in WW1.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528997218

David Johnson

David has long had an interest in military history. He has had three books published on WW1 – a biography of Private Henry Tandey VC,DCM,MM, the organization of executions on the Western Front, and the story of the Shot at Dawn Campaign. In addition he has a novel published, The Enemy at Home, set in WW1.

Book preview

The Last Campaign of

World War One:

1990–2006

The Fight to Win Pardons for

Those Executed

David Johnson

Austin Macauley Publishers

The Last Campaign of World War One: 1990–2006

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgement

Foreword

Introduction

The British Army and the Death Penalty in World War One

1990: The Campaign Starts

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

Some Final Thoughts

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5

Bibliography

About the Author

Following a long career in the public sector and higher education, David Johnson has had two books published on WWI. The first, The Man Who Didn’t Shoot Hitler, is a biography of Private Henry Tandey who was the most decorated private soldier to survive the war. He has been wrongly identified as the soldier who spared Hitler’s life in September 1918. The second book, Executed at Dawn: British Firing Squads on the Western Front 1914-18, discusses how the executions were organised, the abolition of the death penalty in the military and the Shot at Dawn Campaign. This book tells the story in more detail of the Shot at Dawn Campaign to obtain pardons for 306 soldiers who were executed and the establishment’s efforts to thwart it.

David lives in Warwickshire with his partner.

Dedication

To the 306 soldiers (listed in Appendix 5) executed for cowardice, desertion, sleeping at their post, throwing away their arms or hitting a superior officer, and for all those who campaigned for them to be pardoned.

Copyright Information ©

David Johnson (2021)

The right of David Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528997201 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528997218 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgement

Many people have generously helped me and thanks are due to them all but in particular Andrew Mackinlay, without whose time, documents and support, this book could not have been written. I would also like to thank Janet Booth and James White for generously allowing me to quote from their book, He Was No Coward, and Janet Hedger for allowing me to include her poem ‘Too Young’.

Too Young by Janet Hedger

‘Please sir, don’t make me do this

He’s my mate, he’s only young sir.’

‘He broke the rules lad

And sentence is passed

Now come on soldier.

Move along there’

‘But, me’legs won’t move sir

I’m shaking, look.’

What are you soldier

Man or mouse?

‘I’m neither man nor mouse sir

I am just a boy, a boy

Just like my brother sir.’

‘Then aim true lad

And spare him pain

Soldier, cock that rifle

Or you’ll find yourself

Against that wall.’

‘But, but sir I can’t see

I’m blinded sir.’

‘Enough now soldier

Pull that trigger

And that my boy

IS AN ORDER!’

(CRACK!)

‘I am sorry, so sorry mate!’

Was the last cry he uttered

As he fell by the hand,

Of his own gun

Never to be a man.

Early in the morning of July 21st 1915, a young man was led into a small quarry and tied to a post as a padre intoned some short prayers. As the blindfold was placed over his head and the padre said, Amen, silence fell broken only by the sound of the young man’s sobbing.

The young officer, who was himself not much older than the condemned man, slowly raised his sword and when it was once more down at his side a volley rang out and Private Herbert Burden of the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers sagged forward as life leaked out of his body.

Private Burden had lied about his age when he enlisted as he was only sixteen. Ten months later aged only seventeen he was executed for desertion after he had lost his nerve following heavy bombardment at Ypres. At seventeen, he was too young to be officially serving in his regiment on the Western Front. Nevertheless he was executed for desertion.

Foreword

For most of the years between the Armistice in 1918 and the 1980s, very little was uttered or written about this aspect of the British Empire Story disfigured by the shameful execution of over 300 members of the British Empire forces. These men were found guilty of charges ranging from cowardice, desertion, sleeping at post, throwing away arms or hitting a superior officer.

The executions did not feature in the countless television documentaries. Academic historians didn’t focus upon them.

The Establishment knew that they had taken place but they were, in truth, ashamed and embarrassed.

The million plus veterans of the Great War knew all about them too. They never forgot. On top of all the countless horrors which, each night for the remaining years of their lives, would haunt them in their dreams, they would recall how their friends and brothers in arms were humiliated and wickedly executed for the sake of example by an Establishment elite. So many of these men, had become totally dehumanised by the traumas in the trenches.

There were exceptions and in particular, the long serving Labour MP Ernest Turtle who between the wars struggled to be heard in Parliament. Much of his outspoken and revealing speeches culminated in legislation that meant comparable offences in World War II were no longer subject to the capital penalty.

It was as late as the 1980s that Judge Anthony Babington, through dogged persistence, persuaded the very reluctant authorities to release some documentation. From this he was able to forensically expose the scale and depravity of these cruel and base executions in his book For the Sake of Example.

Building on his work was Julian Putkowski, the co-author of the book Shot at Dawn which for the first time revealed the details of each executed soldier.

Now, David Johnson is able to complement these works by revealing the enduring procrastination and stubbornness of the British Establishment’s reluctance to recognise that even four score years from the Armistice, these wrongs cried out to be righted.

At last a very uncomfortable chapter in British history can now be written with clarity and precision.

David explores in great detail what has become known as the Shot at Dawn Campaign. The term ‘campaign’ is, at the very best, shorthand. There were no meetings or a committee to organise strategy or coherence in their broad common objective. It was never organised or staffed by any professional advisors or Parliamentary lobbyist. Despite this it achieved its objective, as the pardons were finally granted by the Labour government in 2006.

The pardons that were eventually conceded were the consequence of a small number of dedicated and persistent people (often unknown to each other) who had one common purpose. They were determined that the names and dignity of these brave British soldiers would finally be recorded and some remedy provided for the families, who still grieved.

In David’s work I am reminded of the words of Senator Robert Kennedy: It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal… or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from one million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

In this case the resistance was the British Establishment. The different centres of energy and daring are those countless numbers of ex-service personnel, relatives of veterans and many, many schoolchildren and students who over 14 years raised in their local communities, in local newspapers and regional broadcasting outlets, the simple demand that these wrongs should be righted. In particular, the late John Hipkin dedicated the later years of his life in an unrelenting endeavour to draw attention to these cruelties.

David Johnson’s work illustrates perfectly how with energy and some considerable luck, a number of us were able to create a current that swept down on the British establishment and overcame the walls of resistance.

This book not only reveals how a few ordinary, and stubborn, people can finally wear down the Establishment, but also how Parliamentary representation can be mobilised despite the labyrinth of obscure arcane rubrics and rules of the House of Commons.

For my part I was privileged as a new Member of Parliament, elected in 1992, to be the vehicle in Parliament whereby these wrongs could be aired and the call for a remedy articulated.

I shall always be grateful to those parliamentary colleagues, drawn from right across the party-political divide together with countless lobby journalists, who kept faith and remained consistent in their support. Whenever questions were asked, motions tabled and Bills published in pursuit of the pardons denied, their support continued.

It is however a matter of fact, which I deeply regret, that a few of my Labour colleagues who enthusiastically signed my early day motions when we were in Opposition, backtracked when they achieved ministerial high office.

They weren’t so much Establishment. It was the Establishment that successfully lent upon them, as it had done for many previous decades. The narrative from the Establishment was: what happened was a long time ago, it was a matter of history and should best be forgotten.

Mercifully, chameleons eventually wither! The resolution of John Hipkin and the family of Harry Farr prevailed. Albeit glacially slow, eventually they won the coveted pardons in 2006.

Andrew Mackinlay

October 2019

Introduction

Just over 1,000,000 British and Empire soldiers were killed in the First World War. It was a war the like of which the world had not experienced before and it was certainly unlike any other war in terms of the number of men involved and the increasing mechanisation of the fighting. The scale of the numbers killed and wounded is difficult to comprehend and within that number were 346 men who were executed (Moore, 1999), of which 40 had committed offences of murder, treason or mutiny.

What is also difficult to comprehend is that while in fact some 3,076 men were sentenced to death only ten percent of them had their sentence confirmed. It was attempting to understand why this had happened that was at the heart of the Shot at Dawn Campaign and as the Campaign gathered support in its quest for pardons, it also experienced the Establishment mobilise its forces in an effort to thwart it.

This book therefore is not just another military history publication about the First World War because the Shot at Dawn Campaign didn’t start until 1990 and only ended in 2006, just fourteen years ago. It is a relatively contemporary story about the last, prominent issue of the First World War to have gripped the public interest and gained popular support. Although at the outset it was initially a campaign to gain pardons for the under-age soldiers who had been executed, over time it was to become a campaign for all 306 men who had been sentenced for such military offences as desertion and cowardice, and then executed, and although at the outset it may not have been viewed as such, it was also very much an anti-Establishment campaign.

The Campaign was not a formally created organisation and therefore did not have a recognised structure with, for example, elected officers and committees. It was more of a movement that was supported by many people in Britain, Ireland and around the world who in their own way did what they could to further the Campaign. Some, but not all, of those who campaigned will be mentioned in this book which will focus on the Campaign’s three main characters without whom the pardons would not have been achieved – John Hipkin, Andrew Mackinlay MP, and Julian Putkowski.

John Hipkin was the unofficial leader of the Campaign and its public face. Julian Putkowski said of Hipkin: John Hipkin, utterly and completely independent – no connection with us at all, I think he wrote to Andrew Mackinlay – started off on his own autonomous campaign. Putkowski acknowledged that Hipkin’s commitment and passion, his regular newsletters, and media appearances helped those individuals supporting the Campaign to feel part of something bigger.

Andrew Mackinlay MP (Labour, Thurrock) was the thorn in the sides of successive governments as he campaigned for the pardons in Parliament. His unstinting commitment and willingness to keep going with the Campaign was a major contribution to its eventual success.

Julian Putkowski, is an academic and historian, and the co-author of Shot at Dawn: Executions in World War One by Authority of the British Army Act, which for the first time revealed the names and details of those executed. Andrew Mackinlay describes Putkowski as a walking encyclopaedia of every case and feels that the Shot at Dawn Campaign owes a lot to him as he had helped to write a chapter of history through his continual feeding of information to individuals and schools making the quest for pardons contagious in the way it spread support.

The Campaign to secure pardons for those executed was divisive then and to some extent remains so to this day. The Establishment, in this case represented by the Ministry of Defence, as the list below shows, was adept at stifling stories and its mistakes through methods ranging from leaked stories to the press, prevarication, using procedures to delay and stifle initiatives, utilising precedents established hundreds of years ago, making things seem more difficult than they really are, embargoes on documents and records, use of Project Fear (this tactic only emerged in the last decade principally in connection with the Scottish Independence Referendum of 2014 and the EU Referendum of 2016 when it was used to spread false information about the impact of these votes on the country’s economic well-being and society as a whole) and even destroying records. Many of these will be familiar to those who have followed the Brexit saga and although this is unlikely to be a complete list by any means, as the story of the Shot at Dawn Campaign unfolds many if not all will all be there.

The use of the death penalty in the First World War was seen as a necessary deterrent by the country’s senior generals and as such is still supported to this day by such senior officers as Lord Dannatt and Colonel John Hughes-Wilson.

Lord Dannatt was Commander-in-Chief, Land Command – the day-to-day commander of the British Army – and then became Chief of the General Staff in August 2006. He now says:

Viewed a hundred years later and with a much better understanding of the effects of battlefield stress and trauma, I think it was perfectly reasonable to re-assess many of the Shot at Dawn cases. That a blanket pardon given was the right and humane move, although it probably masked a small number of cases where the death sentence was fully justified.

Colonel Hughes-Wilson, who together with Cathryn Corns, wrote the book Blindfold and Alone. British Military Executions in the Great War (2001), debated the issue of pardons with John Hipkin on both the radio and in print. His views, which have not changed, are straightforward and to the point:

The law as it stood at the time was followed correctly at the time.

We cannot reinvent the past to suit our modern susceptibilities, standards or mores.

Capital punishment was the European normality of the day for serious crimes on active service.

The blanket pardon makes a mockery of justice then – and now.

These points will be