Shot at Dawn: Cowards, Traitors or Victims?

Page 6 of 7

• 1. Expectations of war
• 2. Military justice
• 3. Shell shock
• 4. The case against a pardon
• 5. Changing times
• 6. A soldier's story
• 7. Find out more
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A soldier's story

Veteran Albert 'Smiler' Marshall recalls only too well the terror of battle. The former Essex Yeomanry soldier, who was 105 in 2002, remembers one incident in 1917 as being even more horrifying than the Somme.

'One afternoon at about 4pm we learned that soldiers from the Oxford and Bucks regiment were to go over the top at 6pm. By nine o'clock every single one of them was dead.

'We went out with the Royal Army Medical Corps to bury them all. An officer held up a white stick as we went into No Man's Land. It was a sign to ask the enemy to stop firing, and they did. We could only dig down a few feet and cover them with a bit of soil, burying them where they lay. It was horrible.'

But having lived through the terror, Smiler, now of Ashtead, Surrey, believes it would be wrong to pardon those who were shot at dawn. 'I didn't know anyone who was executed or who had anything to do with a firing squad but we all knew about the penalty. But it didn't occur to you not to fight. You didn't think about it, you just did it. And you just took what came your way.'

'...you regularly lost a friend, or someone near you. The thought never left you that you could be next.'

And Smiler saw only too well what came the way of many of his comrades. 'You lived in these trenches for days and days with nothing happening but bombardments, but you regularly lost a friend, or someone near you. The thought never left you that you could be next.'

But Smiler, believed to be the last surviving World War One veteran to have fought on horseback, did have some sympathy with at least one man who was punished. 'One day I was ordered to stand guard over a chap who had been tied to a wheel, without food or water, as a punishment for something. I can't remember what he'd done. But I felt sorry for him so I put my fag up to his lips so he could have a smoke. It was a very risky thing to do because if anyone had seen me they'd have tied me to the wheel as well!

'Years later I was walking down Oxford Street in London and I saw him. He recognised me immediately and thanked me. He said he'd never forgotten that fag.'

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Published: 2002-03-01