To End All Wars_ A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 - Adam Hochschild [136]
When the death sentences meted out to the Bantams worked their way up the chain of command to him, Haig commuted the great majority. But he held Stones, Goggins, and McDonald to a more severe standard, presumably because they were noncommissioned officers. "I confirmed the proceedings on three," he wrote in his diary, "namely 1 sergeant and 2 corporals."
On a freezing January night a few days later, heavy snow covered the ground, artillery boomed, and moonlight glinted off the bayonets of guards at the farm where the divisional military police had its headquarters. A staff car pulled into the barnyard and four officers stepped out. The three prisoners were brought outdoors in handcuffs. One officer unrolled a piece of paper and, by flashlight, read aloud Haig's confirmation of the death sentences. One prisoner gasped; the other two remained silent.
Just before dawn, an ambulance picked up the three men from the farm and took them to the execution site. Manacled and blindfolded, they were tied to the stakes for which Albert Rochester had dug holes. Rochester watched as an officer pinned a white envelope over each man's heart as a target. A separate 12-man firing squad aimed at each of the three; at an officer's command the crackle of 36 gunshots rang out. To be sure the job was done, the officer approached and fired a final revolver shot into each prisoner's body.
"As a military prisoner," wrote Rochester later, "I helped clear away the traces of that triple murder. I took the posts down—they were used to cook next morning's breakfast for the police; the ropes were used in the stables."
The ambulance conveyed the dead bodies back to the barn.... I helped carry those bodies towards their last resting place; I collected all the blood-soaked straw and burnt it.
Acting upon police instructions I took all their belongings from the dead men's tunics.... A few letters, a pipe, some fags, a photo.
I could tell you of how the police guffawed at the loving terms of good cheer from the dead men's wives; of their silence after reading one letter from a little girl to "dear Daddy"; of the blood-stained snow that horrified the French peasants; of the chaplain's confession, that braver men he had never met than those three men he prayed with just before the fatal dawn; of the other cases of army "justice" I discovered.... But what's the use!
Back in Durham, Stones's wife, Lizzie, who had been supporting herself and their two young daughters on an army depen dents' allowance of 17 shillings and sixpence a week, was told that Joseph's execution meant the end of that money, and that she would not be eligible for a widow's pension. A fellow miner had promised Stones he would look after Lizzie and the girls if Stones did not return from the war. He married her, but because of the stigma of the execution, they moved away from Durham.
Never one to keep quiet, Rochester, still serving his own jail term for his unpublished letter to the Daily Mail, angrily told the military policemen guarding him that as far as he was concerned, the three men had been punished beyond all reason. He soon began to fear for his own safety. Once his sentence was up, he wondered, what if officers angry with him for denouncing their privileges assigned him to the most dangerous work, such as night patrols to repair barbed wire in no man's land?
One day in prison, however, a smuggled message reached him. "Dear Rochester," it said. "I was sorry to hear of your predicament. Don't worry, I'm taking steps to put things right." It was from the leader of the National Union of Railwaymen. A soldier from Rochester's platoon, home on leave, had got word to him that a union member was in prison, and why.