WWI Pardons

Interesting. This seems to be a bit of a fight.

The Ministry of Defence is to seek pardons for more than 300 soldiers who were shot for military offences during World War I.

Defence Secretary Des Browne said he would be seeking a group pardon, approved by Parliament, for the men.

It is thought 306 British soldiers were shot for cowardice, desertion or other offences in the 1914-1918 war.

Among them was Private Harry Farr, shot for cowardice in 1916 aged 25. His family said they were "overwhelmed".

I wonder what they base the "overwhelmed" on?

A statutory "blanket pardon" recognised that the men should not have been executed, Mr Browne said.

"But it also recognises that everybody involved in these terrible cases were as much victims of World War I as those who died in the battlefield."

But Gary Sheffield, professor of modern history at King's College London, told Today the decision raised "some very difficult issues" about how historical evidence was used.

He said that when the government had previously considered the issue in 1998 it had decided against a blanket pardon.

The reason given was because it said it could not "distinguish between those who deliberately let down their country and their comrades and those who were not guilty of desertion of cowardice", he said.

"That struck me as being true in 1998 and equally true today," Mr Sheffield added.

Sounds reasonable to me. It also stands that if these men are pardoned, that this is a blanket condemnation of the officer's actions in the field that were never seen as criminal at the time. This reassessment of the occurrences isn't going to provide anything but confusion about the history of WWI. It may provide some solace to the family, though I don't see how that is justified if the soldier was indeed shirking his duty.

It is now thought that many of those shot for cowardice were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after enduring months of artillery bombardment in the trenches.

This may be true, but there is no proof.

I'm not against posthumous pardons if there is proof of wrongful actions, but this rewrite of the service actions is tampering with history with very thin evidence.

More here.