Every family in the United Kingdom had a loved one or knew someone who was killed during the First World War. It must have been really upsetting for a family not to know what happened to a loved one, or where they might have been buried. Years after the conflict in 1918, numerous cemeteries and memorials were established and created in the memory of those men killed.
3,000 British soldiers were sentenced to death, of that number 306 men, 11%, a small portion of the British Army were shot to death by their own side. These men suffered from what we know today as PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome) . These men were shot for crimes which were covered by the provision set out in the Army Act, 1881
(i)section 4(2) (casting away arms etc);
(ii)section 4(7) (cowardice);
(iii)section 6(1)(b) (leaving post etc without orders);
(iv)section 6(1)(k) (sentinel sleeping etc on post or leaving post);
(v)section 7 (mutiny and sedition);
(vi)section 8(1) (striking etc superior officer);
(vii)section 9(1) (disobedience in defiance of authority);
(viii)section 12(1) (desertion or attempt etc to desert)
15 of those men came from Wales. These men are
Private George Povey
Lance Corporal William Price
Private Richard Morgan
Private Major Penn
Private Anthony Troughton
Private James Carr
Price Anthony O'Neill
Private J. Thomas
Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Dyett Nelson
Private George Watkins
Private William Jones
Private Henry Rgby
Private James Skone
Private William Scholes
I am going to look briefly at William Jones.
Jones (left), hailed from Glynneath. Jones was a Kitchener volunteer, and joined with the 9th Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers. September 1917, Jones was in France and was acting as a stretcher bearer. This role, was indeed a very dangerous one, they had go out to no mans land collecting wounded, the dead and body parts, and bring them back to the lines.
It was in the situation that Jones, who taking a wounded soldier to the dressing station, that he went missing. 3 months had past when Jones handed by the time was back home in Glynneath, when he handed himself to the police.
Jones was escorted with provost Marshall back to Bristol. He was executed a month later, October 1917, Kemmel Hill, Jones is buried at Lochre Hospice Cemetery. Jones was under the age of 18.
Those men that were Shot at Dawn, are commemorated with the Shot at Dawn Memorial, National Memorial Arboretum, Staffordshire. The men were pardoned with a blanket pardon in 2006.
