His just desert?

The execution of soldiers for desertion during the First World War is an emotive issue with opinions on either side being both polarised and irreconcilable. Much has been written about the subject, a lot of it sensible and a lot of it nonsense.

When visiting the battlefields of France and Belgium I would usually sign the visitors’ books left in the cemeteries and I would often come across the scrawls left by well-meaning fools drawing attention to the fact there was a “Shot at Dawn” man buried there. It was also a particularly undignified spectacle to see a coach-load of battlefield tourists being specifically directed to these graves, there to gawp and ‘tut-tut’, before being hustled on to the next location on their packed itinerary. It was almost as if the other casualties interred there were entirely co-incidental and of a lesser consequence.

To me, such people seem to miss the point of a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery entirely. The central tenet of these places is equality of commemoration, irrespective of rank or deed. The grave of a general is no more carefully tended or marked than that of a private; ditto the graves of those shot by the enemy or by their own side.

I once visited the French military cemetery at Barly, near Arras, there to photograph the grave of a local man, Private William Kerr of the Northumberland Fusiliers, originally from the hamlet of Kirksanton. He wasn’t killed in action nor did he die of wounds; he’d had a heart attack while on a route march on July 18th, 1916. He left a widow and two children. Two days previously, on the 16th, a man of the 1st/4th Battalion had been shot for desertion, possibly the first Territorial soldier to be executed in the war, and he too was buried at Barly, only three graves away. He was 3563, Private John Sloan.

Although his Service Records and Court Martial transcript have survived he is a bit of a mystery. Naturally enough, there were no references to him in the newspapers of the time. His enlistment at Ulverston on June 22nd, 1915, would imply that he was living in that vicinity, although he originated from Northumberland and his next of kin was living in Workington.

It would appear that he may have been illiterate, as he signed both his Attestation Form and the Imperial Service Obligation (to serve overseas) with an ‘X’, and in August a travelling medical board assessed him as having an ‘inferior physique’ and being ‘unfit for any military duty.’ Despite this, in April, 1916, he found himself posted to France to join the 1st/4th Battalion.

He’d only been with the Battalion ‘in the field’ a couple of weeks – and had seen little in the way of front-line service with them – when he absconded from a bombing course on May 18th, as noted in the War Diary.

He wasn't at liberty for very long. Apprehended six days later, he was court-martialled for desertion. There were plenty of witnesses and, no credible excuse being offered in his defence, he was sentenced to death. Commanders all the way up the line to Douglas Haig confirmed the sentence, and on the morning of July 16th he was shot. He was 25. The execution wasn't noted in the War Diary; it simply stated that the Battalion was in training at Barly with a view to the forthcoming offensive, and that the billets were very poor.

Should John Sloan have been executed for his crime? You can decide that for yourself. I do know one thing, though: for every John Sloan there was also a William Kerr, and when 'remembering' one it's all too easy to overlook the other.