Pardon sought at last for WWI

[Marina]

here
This must mean such a lot to surviving family members...and thank goodness we live in more enlightened times with regards to understanding Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Still don't seem to have worked out how not to send people in to battle in the first place alas

[Marina]

my "deserters" vanished off the thread title...

[puff]

I was so pleased to see this on the news, too little too late of course, but some small measure of justice for the family.

[mw14]

All for giving pardons to those who were suffering shock etc, or who had unfair trials. I am not in favour of a BLANKET pardon though, as there were undoubtedly soldiers who did desert, knowing full well what they were doing. By leaving their units, they left everyone who did their job exposed. I say this as a serving TA officer.

[CaligulaCorday]

I sort of disagree with everything really. These people were conscripts, they were young men and boys and if they were cowards, they had every right to be. Frankly I'd be a coward if someone was shooting artillery shells at me. The most reasonable, sensible thing to do when someone's wanting to fire a machine gun at you, is to run and hide. I don't see why it's considered reasonable or just to shoot a young man for being sane enough to be scared.

[Marina]

I would have thought the majority of the families actively campaigning for a pardon after all this time and lack of interest from successive governments, are doing so because they do feel strongly their relative was a brave soldier who cracked under intolerable physical and/or emotional stress. Given the numbers, I expect the MoD will review each case individually. I agree blatant deserters don't deserve a pardon.

[TambaTheDragonSlayer]

How scary.... either be shot at by the enemy... or by your own side.

[CaligulaCorday]

I don't see what's wrong with deserting an army you've been conscripted into, which is fighting an imperialist war. I still don't see why the state has the right to dispose of your life as it wishes.

But that's because I'm an ole lefty.

[Marina]

From my father's experiences as a conscripted sailor at D-Day, the knowledge that you will indeed leave your fellow conscripts in deep trouble if you walk off your job keeps you there I guess caligula. As it was, dad being shot half to pieces as he arrived on Sword meant the Marines he was assigned to were suddenly without their Radio Operator and their radio

[lapsedrunner]

Quick hijack to mw14, I also do the same part time work as you .

[Wilbur]

Did you see Private Farr's daughter on the news last night. She was really choked up and so happy that it had happened in her lifetime, she felt her mother's fight had been vindicated. My grandfather fought in WW1, went to France when he was 19 or 20, so young. He was hugely affected by the war his whole life (he was decorated for one incident, rescuing a wounded soldier from no mans land after a shell attack had left bodies and body parts everywhere - how do you deal with that?), I'm sure these days he would have been offered some help with it, but not then. I can totally understand why desparate and sick men would desert and am glad they are going to look at each case.

[desperateSCOUSEwife]

90 yrs overdue imo

[thewomanwhothoughtshewasahat]

I think WWI was exceptional in precisely the way Caligula describes. I can barely think about it without wanting to weep. I am not a pacifist and sometimes there are wars that need to be fought. Neither am I an idealist who can't see that a functioning army has to have ways of dealing with desertion. But read Pat Barker. Google the facts on the Somme. Think what "going over the top" actually meant. I think it is absolutey right that these men should be pardoned.

[Marina]

My dad was just 18 wilbur.
It took him about 40 years to come to terms with what he experienced on that landing craft and I am sure that these days a PTSD diagnosis and appropriate follow-up would have been made.
The sods had him up at Scapa Flow monitoring German subs only weeks later, still all bandaged up...

[CaligulaCorday]

Agree Marina - that's how states have managed to pursue their wars, by utilising people's sense of loyalty to each other.

[CaligulaCorday]

sorry cross posted before your other post

[Marina]

I think that any chancers who did wilfully desert are long since forgotten. I think the families campaigning now have excellent motives for doing so and agree this should have been sorted many years ago. I don't think it is Private Farr's family, but isn't there a village somewhere in England where descendants have tried and failed to get their grandfather's name on the war memorial, without success, because he "deserted" after years of trench warfare

[Marina]

Fair point caligula. As we all seem to be agreeing though, WWI was a disgraceful war on all fronts - by the time dad was conscripted it was known to all what the Nazis were about, so although he hated every minute, he did at least agree with the main objective of the war.

[Wilbur]

Gosh Marina - that must have been tough for him. Esp when it's your mates who are with you and being shot at too. Pops joined his local regiment, so knew many of the soldiers he fought alongside and who died there. I always think how fragile it makes our lives - one bullet a little to the left and Pops would not be here, and neither would I. Did your dad marry later in life, may I ask? Pops waited until he was nearly 30 (quite late in those days) and didn't have children until he was nearly 40.

[TambaTheDragonSlayer]

I agree with caligula

[Marina]

Yep wilbur. Unlike his two older brothers who had comparatively cushy stores billets in the UK for the war, dad alarmed the family by chucking his medals and uniform into the Solent (his naval record, which was far from glowing, went too), growing a bushy beard, and bumming around Europe and the Med on tramp steamers for years after. He temped to raise money for trekking all summer and only married and settled down at 40.
He saw his closest Navy friend's head blown off. Against orders they were both in the cabin of the landing craft having a last ciggie.
Fifty years later he and the Landing Craft Association successfully proved an "unknown sailor" grave at Hermanville was in fact Norman's, and we attended a Commonwealth War Graves' Commission's rededication of the headstone. For many years he just would not talk about any of this and I do not blame him

[mw14]

Hi lapsedrunner, good to see another STAB here!

[Wilbur]

Oh . I think those experiences really shape a life and a family. Since Pops fought in WW1 and was so interested (or obsessed) in it, that war seems like a huge part of my family life, whereas for other people my age it is simply a few pages in a history text book. After he died we found loads of scrapbooks where he had cut stuff out of the papers - "10 years since the Somme" that kind of thing - and stuck them in, all though his life. What's esp sad is that he was, by nature a very gentle, if somewhat Victorian, man. He loved music and putting on amateur Gilbert and Sullivan, and yet he had to fight a terrible war. He actually became a stretcher bearer after a bit and joined the medical corps as combat was so awful for him. It sounds like you dad was a similar kind of man - he must have had amazing experiences in post-war Europe.

[mw14]

I'm afraid it's wishful thinking that those suffeing PTSD from today's conflicts are diagnosed and helped by the army. Clinical care for such cases has been removed from the armed forces, and is now "managed" by the NHS, which, understandably, has little or no direct experiece of battle-induced PTSD.

See the charity Combat Stress for more information.

[Marina]

We have an Eric Newby-style photo album of a grimy, grinning dad inspecting the ruins of Berlin, on a tramp steamer at Reggio, in the Atlas Mountains etc, wilbur. These memories are priceless really.
Ds knows about grandpa and Norman and what we did 50 years after the war, so takes Remembrance Sunday very seriously, while being very questioning about why wars happen in the first place.
I take it you have read Goodbye to All That and Testament of Youth as often as I have ?

[Wilbur]

I've read "goodbye to all that" a long time ago (love Robert Graves and went through a big phase with him) but have never read Testament of Youth - will put it on the list! I was obsessed for a while with Oh What a Lovely War - had a tutor at college who worked with Joan Littlewood - and I still find it profoundly upsetting.