Not worthy

Civic war memorials don't tend to bear the names of executed men. When they were being commissioned the disgrace of such individuals was something to be forgotten about rather than celebrated, the prevailing opinion being that the inclusion of their names would sully the memory of those who had died honourably in the service of King and Country.

Society has moved on and, de jure, the men executed for purely 'military' crimes have now been granted a posthumous pardon, being regarded as much victims of war as any of the others who died. Occasionally there have been attempts to 'update' local war memorials, although, by and large, the clamouring has been resisted by the councils or public bodies responsible for their upkeep.

One man who is not commemorated on any war memorial in Barrow-in-Furness is 2701, Lance Corporal William John Irvine, of the 1st Battalion. He lived in Sloop Street, one of a series of canyon-like tenements on Barrow Island, cheap and cramped housing, built to supply the demand of the town's burgeoning population in the late nineteenth century. They still stand to-day, although now modernised, of course.

Sloop Street, Barrow-in-Furness c.1902.

Reportedly, he'd joined the 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion around August 10th, 1914, and - puzzlingly - he was posted to the 1st Battalion in France on September 12th, only a month later. I say, 'puzzlingly,' because this seems an awfully short time to have sufficiently trained a man for active duty and, assuming the enlistment date to be correct, I suspect that he may have had some prior military service, perhaps as a Territorial, although he was only 19according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.* He was also (speedily) promoted to Lance Corporal, which again suggests a bit more than the average new recruit.

Whatever his background on enlistment, after a month in France he'd had enough of soldiering and, after stealing the property of another soldier, deserted on October 13th, while the 1st Battalion was at Hazebrouck, preparing to move off to the trenches near Meteren. It was a bad day to abscond: by nightfall, nearly forty of the battalion were dead, with many more wounded. Under the circumstances I suspect that he wouldn't have attracted a great deal of sympathy from his fellow soldiers regarding his subsequent fate.

He was eventually arrested but managed to escape from custody. The second time he was apprehended was the last. It was time for the Army to settle it's account with him and they did, near Steenwerck, at dawn on April 20th, 1915.

He was buried in Le Grand Beaumart British Cemetery. Six days later, on April 26th, he was joined by 8136, Private James Kershaw, another deserter from the 1st Battalion.

The graves of Irvine and Kershaw, side-by-side in Le Grand Beaumart British Cemetery.

After the war William Irvine's mother, Jane, supplied her address details to the Imperial War Graves Commission when invited to do so, for inclusion in the cemetery register. Whether she ever submitted his name for inclusion on any of the Barrow-in-Furness memorials I'll never know, although somehow, I doubt it.

Nearly a century on, I think it's probably best left that way.

* I suspect that his age, as given in the CWGC's database, is incorrect, as he is shown on the 1911 Census as being 21, which would make him around 25 when he was shot.