February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Murphy, a private in the 47th Battalion, Machine Gun Corps, was just minutes away from his appointment with a firing squad.
It was the morning of Sept. 12, 1918. World War I had only a couple of grim months left in it.
Murphy, a Dublin native, had thus far avoided German bullets. He was not going to be so lucky with the British ones.
Murphy had been sentenced to death by a British army courts martial for desertion. The word “desertion” was afforded a broad definition during the war to end all wars. It didn’t necessarily mean that the accused had physically fled the place of battle. It could mean that a soldier had, for whatever reason, failed to take part in an operation.
Not infrequently, soldiers did not refuse. They were simply unable to do much of anything because of fear, fatigue and shell shock, known more commonly these days as post-traumatic stress disorder.
The war to end all wars had indeed been a particularly stressful and traumatic conflict. For countless soldiers on both sides there was nothing post about their trauma and stress. It was all too concurrent.
Murphy’s trauma that September morning can only be imagined. As dawn broke, his eyes were covered. The last sounds he heard were prayers from a chaplain, crisply delivered orders and a volley of rifle shots.
Murphy was the last of 26 Irish soldiers, all volunteers, executed by the British army during the four years of war. Most were shot for desertion.
One of the executed, Private Patrick Downey from Limerick, might have been handed a few Hail Marys and an Our Father for his offense had he been judged in a confessional. But he was shot for his “disobedience.”
James Mullaney, a driver in the Royal Field Artillery, was executed for “striking a sergeant.”
Not infrequently, the driving force behind an execution was not so much the offense as the belief in the British military establishment that examples had to be continually made in order to maintain discipline in the ranks.
In all, the British army executed 346 soldiers during the Great War. 306 of them were shot for offenses that were no longer punishable by death 12 years after the war ended.
The British tally for executions exceeded those for both their German enemy, and their French allies.
As often as not, the courts martial was a rapid affair with execution following the morning after sentencing. If the prisoner was lucky, he would be given some alcohol or morphine just before death.
Six soldiers would be in the firing squad, one with a blank round in his rifle. A piece of white cloth would be affixed to the prisoner’s tunic above his heart. If five bullets failed to kill, the officer presiding would deliver a coup de grace with his pistol.
In addition to soldiers from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, British firing squads executed men from New Zealand, Canada and, in one case, a boy from Jamaica. Australia, in an early demonstration of independence, refused to allow the British to prosecute Australian troops.
In recent years, an international campaign called Shot at Dawn has been battling with the British Ministry of Defense to bestow pardons on 306 of the men, those who were shot for offenses other than treason, mutiny and murder.
Successive British governments have, however, been reluctant to admit that wrongs may have been committed by the British military during World War I. The New Zealand government, impatient over London’s foot-dragging, granted pardons of its own to five New Zealanders who were shot.
The Irish government has now been enlisted in Ireland’s Shot at Dawn campaign by its founder, Peter Mulvany, a Dublin bus driver who spends most of his free time outside the General Post Office on O’Connell Street gathering signatures for a petition on behalf of the 26 executed Irish soldiers, the oldest of whom was 38, the youngest (three of them) just 19.
Mulvany started collecting signatures in February. He will continue to do so until Nov. 11, the 86th anniversary of the end of World War I.
“These court-martials were arbitrary and irregular,” Mulvany said.
Mulvany was not satisfied when the British Ministry of Defense expressed “regret” for the executions a few years ago but refused to grant pardons.
“I’m worried that they are digging in their heels,” Mulvany said.
Mulvany, too, has been digging in. He has enlisted the support of politicians and political parties on both sides of the border, including Sinn F