Old soldier fights for justice for boy victims

By Rachel Donnelly

LONDON LETTER: "Went over the top at 7.30 a.m. after what seemed an interminable period of terrible apprehension. Our artillery seemed to increase in intensity and the German guns opened up on No Man's Land . . . none of our men was visible but in all directions came pitiful cries of pain."

And so it was that Lieut Alfred Bundy, 2nd Middlesex, 8th Division, wrote of the July 1st Battle of the Somme in 1916. His words and those of so many men who didn't survive have echoed down the generations.

On that same terrible battlefield, Pte Dennis Horrigan, from Cork city, serving in the Middlesex Regiment, was sent to a listening post in No Man's Land with three other soldiers. They had enough ammunition and food for their watch and thought they would soon be relieved. But they were forgotten.

They ran out of food and then ran out of ammunition. Pte Horrigan was the senior ranking member of the group and decided to disobey orders and crawl back to the front line. When his commanding officer saw him crawl out of the smoke and death of No Man's Land, he immediately sent him back to the listening post. But the position was blown up and Pte Horrigan was the only one to survive.

"To us he is a hero," says Pte Horrigan's daughter, Doreen Jansen, as she describes her father's actions during the Great War. "It just shows the line between being a hero and being shot is so thin. If you think about it, he had done enough [by disobeying orders] to get shot at dawn."

Doreen remembers that long after the war her father and brothers would lay poppy wreaths at the Cenotaph in London. In 1998 when, for the first time, a wreath commemorating the 306 soldiers from the British army executed in the war was placed at the Cenotaph, the effect on Doreen was immense. The dedication on the wreath spoke of the loss of the "boy soldiers". Many of them were under-age, just 17 or 18. Doreen had never heard about these soldiers but when her brother told her about the wreath it led her to begin a private search to find out what happened to them. The search brought her to John Hipkin, founder of the Shot at Dawn campaign, who is fighting for a pardon for all 306 soldiers, including 26 Irishmen. Both have unearthed valuable information about the soldiers. John refers to the 306 soldiers as "my boys", which is understandable since he has a special interest in military life, being the youngest member of the British forces imprisoned during the second World War. Now aged 74, he has been campaigning for 10 years for a legal pardon, and partly due to his efforts the Labour government, in 1998, expressed its "deep sense of regret" for their executions.

The soldiers were recognised as "victims" just like those who were killed in action or died from disease. But there was no pardon because the government said it was too late to distinguish between those who had deliberately let the side down and those who were not guilty of cowardice or desertion.

"There was a 100-year ban on access to the court martial files and it is no wonder the governments wanted to keep it quiet. They were shooting 17-year-old boys," says Mr Hipkin. "Again and again, reading through the files, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that it was a class matter. Only two junior officers were shot during the first World War. I was told by the Ministry of Defence that the secrecy was to protect the families. But it wasn't, their pensions had been stopped and on the front of the court martial documents were the names of the officers who had sentenced them to death. It was to protect them."

One of the Irish soldiers executed was Pte 2271, Patrick Downey. He was from Co Limerick and served in the 6th Battalion, Leinster Regiment. The offence that led to his execution shows how easy it was during the first World War for soldiers of good character, possibly affected by trauma and overwhelming fear, to be shot for relatively minor offences.

Pte Downey was on field punishment number one. It involved being tied by the wrists to the wheel of a gun carriage and was known as "the crucifixion". He turned up for his punishment one day without wearing his hat and was told to put it on. Pte Downey refused to put it on. He was sentenced to death for disobedience and executed near the port of Salonika in Greece on December 27th, 1915. His last recorded words summed up the futility of the punishment: "You let me enlist and then you bring me out here and shoot me."

In Ypres this weekend Mr Hipkin will join campaigners and historians to discuss the case of the 306 soldiers. His aim is to get one million signatures for his campaign and he wants people in the UK and Ireland to write to their MPs and TDs to demand a pardon. "It was absolutely disgusting," he says. "These boys showed great courage and they all deserve a pardon."

The Shot at Dawn campaign can be contacted at www.shotatdawn.org.uk

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