Military Executions during World War I PDF Download

Author: G. Oram
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230287980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Three hundred and fifty-one men were executed by British Army firing-squads between September 1914 and November 1920. By far the greatest number were shot for desertion in the face of the enemy. Controversial even at the time, these executions of soldiers amid the horrors of the Western Front continue to haunt the history of war. This book provides a critical analysis of military law in the British army and other major armies during the First World War, with particular reference to the use of the death penalty. This study establishes a full cultural and legal framework for military discipline and compares British military law with French and German military law. It includes case studies of British troops on the Frontline.

Author: Julian Putkowski
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 0850522951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
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.

Author: John Hughes-Wilson
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 147460319X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
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.

Author: French L. MacLean
Publisher: Schiffer Military History
ISBN: 9780764345777
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"The Fifth Field reveals one of the final secrets of the war: how 96 American soldiers in Europe and North Africa were tried by American General Courts-Martial, convicted by military juries, sentenced to death, executed and buried in an obscure, secret plot at an American military cemetery in France"--Author's website.

Author: Andrew Clark
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307368734
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
When award-winning journalist Andrew Clark found the file on Harold Joseph Pringle, he uncovered a Canadian tragedy that had lain buried for fifty years. This extraordinary story of the last soldier to be executed by the Canadian military -- likely wrongfully -- gives life to the forgotten casualties of war and brings their honour home at last. Harold Pringle was underage when the Second World War broke out, eager to leave quiet Flinton, Ontario, to serve by his father’s side. But few who volunteered to fight “the good fight” realized what horror lay ahead; soon Pringle found himself in Italy, fighting on the bloody “Hitler Line,” where two-thirds of his company were killed. Shell-shocked, he embarked on a tragic, final course that culminated in a suspect murder conviction. His appeal was reviewed by the highest levels of government, right up to prime minister King. But Private Pringle was put to death -- the only soldier the Canadians executed in the whole of the Second World War. His own countrymen carried out the orders, forbidden to go home before completing this last grotesque assignment, even though the war had ended. The Pringle file was closed and stayed that way for fifty years -- until Andrew Clark uncovered it and began a two-year investigation on Pringle’s life in the army. A Keen Soldier is a true-life military detective story that shows another side of what many consider our proudest military campaign. Andrew Clark examines the fallout of a crisis that disfigured our national conscience and continues to raise questions about the ethics of war. And he does so with eloquence and a deep compassion, not only for his subject but for all wartime soldiers -- even the men who executed Pringle and the officer who gave the order to fire.

Author: A. P. Herbert
Publisher: Alpha Edition
ISBN: 9789357916998
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Secret Battle, a classical book, has been considered essential throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.

Author: Paul Johnson
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1399011804
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The Oise-Aisne American Cemetery is the last resting place of 6,012 American soldiers who died fighting in a small portion of Northern France during the First World War. The impressive cemetery is divided into four plots marked A to D. However, few visitors are aware that across the road, behind the immaculate façade of the superintendent’s office, unmarked and completely surrounded by impassable shrubbery, is Plot E, a semi-secret fifth plot that contains the bodies of ninety-four American soldiers. These were men who were executed for crimes committed in the European Theater of Operations during and just after the Second World War. Originally, the men whose death sentences were carried out were buried near the sites of their executions in locations as far afield as England, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Algeria. A number of the men were executed in the grounds of Shepton Mallet prison in Somerset – the majority of whom were hanged in the execution block, with two being shot by a firing squad in the prison yard. The executioner at most of the hangings was Thomas William Pierrepoint, assisted mainly by his more-famous nephew Albert Pierrepoint. Then, in 1949, under a veil of secrecy, the ‘plot of shame’, as it has become known, was established in France. The site does not exist on maps of the cemetery and it is not mentioned on the American Battle Monuments Commission’s website. Visits to Plot E are not encouraged. Indeed, public access is difficult because the area is concealed, surrounded by bushes, and is closed to visitors. No US flag is permitted to fly over the plot and the graves themselves have no names, just small, simple stones the size of index cards that are differentiated only by reference numbers. Even underground the dishonored are set apart, with each body being positioned with its back to the main cemetery. In The Plot of Shame, the historian Paul Johnson uncovers the history of Plot E and the terrible stories of wartime crime linked to it.

Author: David Johnson
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750965525
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Much has been written about the 302 British and Commonwealth soldiers who were executed for military offences during the First World War, but there is usually only a passing reference to those who took part – the members of the firing squad, the officer in charge, the medical officer and the padre. What are their stories? Through extensive research, David Johnson explores the controversial story of the men forced to shoot their fellow Tommies, examining how they were selected, how they were treated before, during and after the executions and why there were so many procedural variations in the way that the executions were conducted.

Author: Floris Tomasini
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137538287
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence. This book is a multidisciplinary work that investigates the notion of posthumous harm over time. The question what is and when is death, affects how we understand the possibility of posthumous harm and redemption. Whilst it is impossible to hurt the dead, it is possible to harm the wishes, beliefs and memories of persons that once lived. In this way, this book highlights the vulnerability of the dead, and makes connections to a historical oeuvre, to add critical value to similar concepts in history that are overlooked by most philosophers. There is a long historical view of case studies that illustrate the conceptual character of posthumous punishment; that is, dissection and gibbetting of the criminal corpse after the Murder Act (1752), and those shot at dawn during the First World War. A long historical view is also taken of posthumous harm; that is, body-snatching in the late Georgian period, and organ-snatching at Alder Hey in the 1990s.

Author: Simon Webb
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1526790963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This book relates a chapter of American military history which many people would rather forget. When the United States came to the aid of Britain in 1942, the arrival of American troops was greeted with unreserved enthusiasm, but unfortunately, wartime sometimes brings out the worst, as well as the best, in people. A small number of the soldiers abused the hospitality they received by committing murders and rapes against British civilians. Some of these men were hanged or shot at Shepton Mallet Prison in Somerset, which had been handed over for the use of the American armed forces. Due to a treaty between Britain and America, those accused of such offences faced an American court martial, rather than a British civilian court, which gave rise to some curious anomalies. Although rape had not been a capital crime in Britain for over a century, it still carried the death penalty under American military law and so the last executions for rape in Britain were carried out at this time in Shepton Mallet. Fighting For the United States, Executed in Britain tells the story of every American soldier executed in Britain during the Second World War. The majority of the executed soldiers were either black or Hispanic, reflecting the situation in the United States itself, where the ethnicity of the accused person often played a key role in both convictions and the chances of subsequently being executed.