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Post by wildmacrae on Aug 13, 2009 21:24:07 GMT 1
I have read all youre posts and found them very interesting indeed what I know about war youcould put on the back of a postage stamp, but heres my opinion for what its worth, personally I dont think there were any cowards in the wars, it was just that some men were braver than others. You only have to listen to Harry Patches words and it says it all. War is not worth it get round the table and talk it over. And any man that says he is not scared going over the top is a lier. dan
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Post by Waverley on Aug 13, 2009 21:40:10 GMT 1
I have read all youre posts and found them very interesting indeed what I know about war you could put on the back of a postage stamp, but heres my opinion for what its worth, personally I dont think there were any cowards in the wars, it was just that some men were braver than others. You only have to listen to Harry Patches words and it says it all. War is not wrth it get round the table and talk it over. And any man that says he is scared going over the top is a lier. dan I have a couple of hours of audio tape that I done with David Burnett who was a soldier of the 16th Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry who says the same thing but he still comes across as very patriotic and believes he was right to enlist to fight the Germans. He gives a detailed account of the death of Tommy Watt whose photo you recently put into the RHF Museum archive Danny and I visited his grave on numerous times plus when over in July. No one believes that any war is glorious but sometimes there is no way that they can be avoided...fortunately for our generation Danny we were never in the situation whereby we were conscripted or had to volunteer for war. Maybe that is why we have so much respect for those who served then and still volunteer today...me personally I cannot say in words how much I admire them then and now.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2009 19:31:01 GMT 1
Harold Begbie is a worse Poet than I am and I was having a laff. What is it about ? Nothing to do with Shot At Dawn that I can see ?? Is it a pop at Conscientious Objectors ?
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patrick
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Post by patrick on Oct 12, 2009 20:35:41 GMT 1
you could say that andy, c.o. or cowards it depends on how people see it, when they read it.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2009 20:40:23 GMT 1
Personal opinion right enough Patrick which will never be altered by debate.
To me not Cowards but men of Principle.
To many the soft option was to go. !!
I am not a Pacifist but would not have gone to Vietnam for example.
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patrick
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Post by patrick on Oct 12, 2009 21:17:44 GMT 1
I can't comment on that one andy never having been in that position myself, unlike other relatives of mine.
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Post by Waverley on Oct 13, 2009 8:11:19 GMT 1
Seems to me like one of the many poems , songs or posters that were used to make men enlist by appealing to their conscience.
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patrick
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Post by patrick on Oct 13, 2009 18:00:15 GMT 1
I wouldn't argue with you on that one.
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Post by davidhendry on Nov 13, 2009 9:03:13 GMT 1
Charlie, No doubt you`re well read on the subject of WW1. Could you, therefore tell me the PROPORTION of awards, like VC`s, MC`s, etc. won by officers. I`m quite sure the OR`s awards will be disproportionate, favouring the officers. Reports are written by officers, and say what we will of them, they stick together. I was a member of an officers mess in the mid 60s. We had a visit from the then Brit. War Minister, Roy Mason. The CO introduced me as `Our engineering Officer---But not one of us`That just about sums up the officer class in the Brit armed forces, even now but to a lesser extent than it did in WW1.
Why are officers allowed to resign their commission?
Why were pilots in WW2, not from officer class backgrounds, not given the Kings commission?
Why are there two intakes per year in Sandhurst?One for graduates, the other for non graduates. The latter made up, mainly, from officer class backgrounds.
Officers in the more technical regiments, REME, RE, tend to come from the graduate intake.
To return to the thread, were any officers shot for any of the crimes ORs were executed for? Regards.
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Post by Waverley on Mar 22, 2010 15:36:24 GMT 1
Pardoned: the 306 soldiers shot at dawn for 'cowardice' By Ben Fenton Published: 12:01AM BST 16 Aug 2006
The 'Shot at Dawn' memorial to the 306 executed soldiers at the National Memorial Arboretum
All 306 soldiers of the First World War who were shot at dawn for cowardice or desertion will be granted posthumous pardons, the Ministry of Defence said last night.
Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, has decided to cut short a review that had been prompted by campaigns to exonerate the men, and emergency legislation will be put before the House of Commons soon after it resumes sitting in the autumn. The news was greeted with joy by the family of Pte Harry Farr, who was executed during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 for cowardice in the face of the enemy.
His daughter, Gertrude Harris, 93, and granddaughter Janet Booth, 63, had fought a legal battle to overturn the ruling in 2000 by Geoff Hoon, the former defence secretary, that there was no case for a posthumous pardon.
Mrs Harris, from Harrow, north-west London, said: "I am so relieved that this ordeal is now over and I can be content knowing that my father's memory is intact. "I have always argued that my father's refusal to rejoin the front line, described in the court martial as resulting from cowardice, was in fact the result of shell-shock. And I believe that many other soldiers suffered from this too, not just my father. "I hope that others who had brave relatives who were shot by their own side will now get the pardons they equally deserve." In a statement, Mr Browne said: "Although this is a historical matter, I am conscious of how the families of these men feel today. "They have had to endure a stigma for decades. That makes this a moral issue too, and having reviewed it, I believe it is appropriate to seek a statutory pardon. "I hope we can take the earliest opportunity to achieve this by introducing a suitable amendment to the current Armed Forces Bill. "I believe a group pardon, approved by Parliament, is the best way to deal with this. After 90 years, the evidence just doesn't exist to assess all the cases individually. "I do not want to second guess the decisions made by commanders in the field, who were doing their best to apply the rules and standards of the time. "But the circumstances were terrible, and I believe it is better to acknowledge that injustices were clearly done in some cases, even if we cannot say which - and to acknowledge that all these men were victims of war." Mr Browne has waived the review announced somewhat reluctantly by the MoD when Mrs Harris won the right to challenge a refusal to reconsider the case by John Reid when he was defence secretary. John Dickinson, the lawyer representing Mrs Harris, said: "This is complete common sense and acknowledges that Pte Farr was not a coward but an extremely brave man. "Having fought for two years practically without respite in the trenches, he was very obviously suffering from a condition we now would have no problem in diagnosing as post traumatic stress disorder, or shell-shock, as it was known in 1916." The amendment allowing the Defence Secretary to pardon the men will be appended to the next piece of legislation the MoD puts before the Commons and it is possible that it will be complete by Christmas. John Hipkin, the organiser of the Shot at Dawn campaign to secure pardons for soldiers executed during the First World War, welcomed the decision. "It's incredible news," he said. Mr Hipkin, a retired teacher from Newcastle upon Tyne, highlighted the fact that four of the 306 executed were aged 17 when they were shot. A campaign for justice has been run for decades on behalf of those shot at dawn, starting almost immediately after the war ended, largely on the grounds of the primitive methods of justice exercised by military tribunals during the 1914-18 war. Pte Farr was executed after a 20-minute court martial on the Somme in Oct 1916. Evidence was given by a medical officer that could have allowed the tribunal to excuse him, but it was ignored. Pte Farr was one of 18 men shot for cowardice during the Great War. Almost all the others were executed under the military code against desertion. Pte Farr's case has become emblematic of those in which relatives and friends argued that no proper account was taken of the stress of trench warfare. However, the Ministry of Defence has resisted posthumous pardons for a long time, not least because of the fear that they might create unwelcome and unforeseen legal precedents. But Mr Browne has been known to have stronger views on the subject than his predecessors. A government source said the Defence Secretary had acted as a matter of principle because he felt there was an urgent moral matter to be resolved. Mr Reid was advised last winter by MoD lawyers that no soldier executed in the 1914-18 war should ever be granted a pardon on procedural grounds. This was justified on the basis that the lack of documentary evidence would make it impossible to show that procedural errors had occurred. Correlli Barnett, a military historian, said last night that the mass posthumous pardon was "pointless" after all these years. "These were decisions taken in the heat of a war when the commanders' primary duty was to keep the Army together and to keep it fighting. They were therefore decisions taken from a different moral perspective," he said. "For the people of this generation to come along and second-guess decisions taken then is wrong. "It was done in a particular historical setting and in a particular moral and social climate. It's pointless to give these pardons. What's the use of a posthumous pardon?" Those who were shot for cowardice or desertion were by and large treated fairly, according to the standards of the time, he added.
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Post by Waverley on Mar 22, 2010 16:19:00 GMT 1
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Post by Deleted on Mar 22, 2010 21:35:53 GMT 1
That Statue is one of the saddest things I have ever seen .!
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Post by davidhendry on Apr 12, 2010 10:57:29 GMT 1
The statue looks just like the wee boy, who I would guess, made up a fair proportion of those executed. So, so sad. Will the `High Heid Yins`ever learn. Shell shock was called cowardice then.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2010 12:45:53 GMT 1
What makes me sick these men didnt ask for war.it was goverments.
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