On September 8th, 1914, 90 years ago this week, a 19-year-old private became the first soldier to be executed by a British Army firing squad in the first World War. He had left Dublin for France with his regiment just three weeks before.
Thomas Highgate had been a farm labourer in Kent before enlisting in the Royal West Kent Regiment, based at Richmond Barracks in Inchicore, Dublin, in February 1913.
On August 5th, 1914, the day after Britain declared war, he made a will on the back of his army pay book. It is poignant in its stark simplicity. "If I get killed", he wrote, "all I have to come for my services I leave to Miss Mary McNulty, 3 Leinster street, Phibsborough, Dublin." Mary was 18 when Highgate left for the war.
The English circuit court judge Anthony Babington wrote in For the Sake of Example (1983), his seminal study of first World War capital courts martial: "Death did not come to them random and abrupt. It came with a measured tread as the calculated climax of an archaic and macabre ritual carried out, supposedly, in the interests of discipline and morale." He found that the cases for the accused were seldom presented adequately, and sometime not presented at all. Yet the decision of a court martial was almost impossible to appeal. In all 306 soldiers, including 26 Irish, were executed, the vast majority for desertion.
Highgate's regiment took part in the Battle of Mons, Belgium, in which 8,000 men died, and the subsequent retreat to Tournan, 20 miles east of Paris, a 200-mile slog in merciless heat. George Roupell, who later won the Victoria Cross, noted in his diary that, as well as being physically weak, the men were mentally drained because they were never able to escape the reach of German fire. "Since our fight at Mons on 23rd August we had not a single day's rest," he wrote. "When we were not fighting we were marching as hard as we could. It is scarcely surprising that under these conditions traces of panic and loss of self-control occurred."
The retreat lasted from August 24th to September 5th. The following morning, September 6th, a gamekeeper found Thomas Highgate, dressed in civilian clothes, on the Rothschild estate at Tournan. He was arrested by French police and handed over to the British Army. A three-officer court was assembled to try him for desertion that afternoon.
In evidence, the gamekeeper claimed Highgate had told him: "I have lost my Army and I mean to get out of it." Highgate countered: "I told him I was trying to get out of it, meaning that I had lost my way and wanted to get out of the place in which I was, and I wanted to rejoin my regiment." He said he had left the bivouac with his regiment that morning. They had halted on the side of the road and he became detached from them when he went to relieve himself, and was trying to catch up. He went into a barn to rest. "I have a slight remembrance of putting some civilian clothes on, but do not remember exactly what happened until a man came down to arrest me. I was coming back to see if I could find my clothes and my regiment, but was taken to the police station before I could get back."
According to the army's legal manual, the offence of desertion implied an intention "not to return to His Majesty's service". The fact that Highgate was found in civilian clothes was certainly suspicious and he could not explain it to the court. But he had kept his identity papers and his pay book. He had told the gamekeeper he was a British soldier, and the gamekeeper confirmed this in evidence. When arrested, he had immediately revealed his identity. Highgate's testimony about when and why he became detached from his regiment went unchallenged.
The commanding officer, General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, who authorised the trial, had noted that, because of the proximity of the enemy, it was impossible to allow Highgate adequate time to prepare his case and he had to defend himself. No evidence was produced to taint his good character or his military record.
All these factors should have obliged the court to mitigate any sentence. However, given the low morale among the troops, the army's top brass seemed determined to exploit the case as a warning to others. Highgate was convicted and sentenced to death within hours of his arrest. Later that day, the Commander-in-Chief, General Sir John French, gave orders that the execution be carried out "as publicly as possible".
Two days later, at 6.22 a.m. on September 8th, a captain, accompanied by an Anglican chaplain, informed Highgate of his fate. Forty-five minutes later he was dead. The firing squad's shots rang out at 7.07 a.m. as his brigade group marched past.
Mary McNulty may never have known Thomas Highgate's true fate. His name became taboo in his home village of Shoreham and it is believed his parents left in shame for the relative anonymity of the London suburbs. It is a tragic irony that three of their sons later died in action.
Whatever Private Highgate left Mary would have been extremely meagre. In his memoirs the war historian Liddell Hart recalled having had the "nauseating" task of sending army letters to the parents of executed men. When he protested at the callousness of these bald announcements, he was told it was a means of saving money in pensions.