Executed at Dawn by David Johnson

into a courtyard where they found their friend, Jimmy Smith, blindfolded and tied to an execution chair in front of a wall, with a white target pinned to his tunic, just above his heart. Protesting furiously to the commanding officer, the 12-man firing squad – 11 privates and a non-commissioned officer – was summarily ordered to execute Jimmy. The lads aimed and fired, the majority deliberately missing the target. However, Jimmy was wounded, the chair was knocked over and he lay writhing in agony on the ground.
    The young officer in charge of the firing squad was shaking like a leaf, but he knew now that he had to finish Jimmy off by putting a bullet through his brain with his Webley pistol. He lost his nerve, however, and could not fire the pistol in his hand as Jimmy continued to writhe in agony on the ground.
    One of Jimmy’s friends, 23643 Private Richard Blundell, who hailed from Everton in Liverpool, was then ordered by the commanding officer to take the Webley pistol and kill Jimmy. Jimmy’s death was recorded on that day at 5.51 am. The 12 members of the firing squad were given 10 days’ leave after that tragic event in the heat of battle. That was unusual.

    Private Blundell lived until he was 95 and carried the memory of that day with him until he died. He was heard to utter, when he was near to his own death, ‘What a way to get leave.’
    In an article in the Boston Sunday Globe (12 November 2000), a veteran by the name of John Laister recalled being part of a firing squad when he was a teenager, and when the time came for him to take aim he saw that the soldier he was about to shoot was younger than him: ‘There were tears in his eyes and tears in mine.’

    † † †

    Victor Silvester is now known as a famous dance band leader, but in 1914 he was just a boy of nearly 15 years of age who had managed to enlist. His true age was only discovered in 1917 after he was wounded, and he was subsequently sent back to England. He was to claim shortly before his death in 1978 that he had taken part in the execution of five soldiers, because when recovering from his wounds at Étaples in 1917 he was detailed to act as a messenger for the commandant’s office. A sharp-eyed officer saw the crossed-rifle badge on Silvester’s sleeve, which denoted that he was a first-class marksman, and commented that he would be useful for what he described as ‘special duties’. Silvester was subsequently to find out that this meant having to be a member of a firing squad, and he described one such occasion in graphic detail (Allison and Failey, 1986):

    The tears were rolling down my cheeks as he went on attempting to free himself from the ropes attaching him to the chair. I aimed blindly and when the gunsmoke had cleared away we were further horrified to see that, although wounded, the intended victim was still alive. Still blindfolded, he was attempting to make a run for it still strapped to the chair. The blood was running freely from a chest wound. An officer in charge stepped forward to put the finishing touch with a revolver held to the poor man’s temple. He had only once cried out and that was when he shouted the one word mother. He could not have been much older than me. We were told later that he had in fact been suffering from shell-shock, a condition not recognised by the army at the time.

    Silvester recalled the effects of taking part in an execution as disturbed sleep and physical illness, claiming that he had been hospitalised and strapped to a bed to stop him from deserting. There is, though, some doubt about his recollections, as Corns and Hughes-Wilson contend that his story bears no relation to the facts.

    † † †

    The condemned prisoner did not always meekly make his way, or allow himself to be easily led, to the stake or chair to be used in his execution, thereby creating further horrors for the firing squad, as was contained in Ernest Thurtle’s letter No.1. This letter appears to refer to the