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Much has been written about the soldiers executed during WW1 for military offenses, all of whom were conditionally pardoned in 2006. However, until now very little attention has been paid to the cases of men who were tried under the Army Act and executed for murder. The British Army has always been reticent about publicizing courts martial and eighty years elapsed before the government was compelled to prematurely declassify the written proceedings of First World War capital courts martial. Even then, public attention tended to concentrate on cases involving soldiers who had been shot at dawn for offenses other than homicide, and virtually nobody was inclined to seek a posthumous pardon or j...
Shot at Dawn chronicles the tragic fate of more than 300 soldiers on the Western Front between 1918-18. The authors scoured the Imperial War Museum, public records and war diaries to piece together the jigsaw. A graphic account of man's inhumanity to man is the result of their labours.
This important book, first published in 1998 to great acclaim, makes available information relating to more than 3,000 soldiers and civilians who were sentenced to death by military courts during the First World War and its aftermath. Details of these individuals are presented in two lists - one chronological according to the date of sentencing, the other alphabetical - together with National Archives reference numbers"--Back cover.
The issue of military executions during the war has always been controversial and embargoes have made it difficult for researchers to get at the truth. Now these two writers give us a vast amount of information. They show that trials were grossly unfair and incompetent. Many of the condemned men had been soldiers of exemplary behaviour, courage and leadership but had cracked under the dreadful strain of trench warfare. This acclaimed book is the authority on this shameful saga.
Three hundred and fifty-one men were executed by British Army firing squads between September 1914 and November 1920. By far the greatest number, 266 were shot for desertion in the face of the enemy. The executions continue to haunt the history of the war, with talk today of shell shock and posthumous pardons. Using material released from the Public Records Office and other sources, the authors reveal what really happened and place the story of these executions firmly in the context of the military, social and medical context of the period.
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Among the many deadly innovations that were first deployed on the battlefields of World War I, none was as terrifying--or notorious--as poison gas. First used by the Germans on April 22, 1915, gas was instantly seen as a new way of fighting war, an indication that total warfare was here, and would be far more devastating and cruel than anyone had imagined. This book investigates the effects of chlorine gas at all levels, from its effects on individual soldiers to its impact on combat operations and tactics to its eventual role in the push to codify rules of warfare. Gathering eleven historians and experts on chemical weapons, Innocence Slaughtered puts WWI's cruelest innovation into its historical, industrial, and social context.
Commissioned by the Ruskin School of Art at the Universty of Oxford as part of 14-18 Nov WWI Centenary Art Commissions, Shot at Dawn is a new body of work by the photographer Chloe Dewe Mathew that focuses on the sites at which British, French and Belgian troops were executed for cowardice and desertion between 1914 and 1918. The project comprises images of twenty-three locations at which individuals were shot or held in the period leading up to their executions and all were taken as close to the exact time of execution as possible and at approximately the same time of year.
Telling Tales about Men explores some of the ways in which conscientious objectors to compulsory military service were viewed and treated in England during the First World War. In doing so, it considers these men’s experiences, their beliefs, perceptions, and actions. Each of the six main chapters explores a different collection of ideas about objectors. Thus, they are, for example, portrayed as cowards, heroes, traitors, patriots, criminals, deviants, degenerates, and upstanding, intensely moral men. Here the tales told draw upon sources ranging from diaries, government papers, tribunal records, newspapers, magazines, and novels, and are informed by writings from fields including literary studies, criminology, sociology, and law, as well as various branches of historical studies. Telling Tales about Men is essential reading for scholars in the fields of the First World War, pacifism, militarism, and gender. It is also aimed at those with a general interest in the Great War and the military as well as in peace movements and pacifism.