Interesting, to me at least, that t.v. coverage of the Great War rarely highlights the disparity of the lives in the trenches between officers and other ranks ..especially in cases of courts martial .. other ranks could be shot for dozing momentarily on sentry duty . Desertion or cowardice incurred the same punishment and there are over 350 recorded cases of execution of other ranks for these offences..many of these brave men had been returned to the front after being wounded more than once !..fair enough you might say..discipline had to be maintained..but strangely there are only one or two cases of officers being executed (murdered) for similar crimes ...is that because they were much braver..? Well no actually..if you were fortunate enough to be an officer and did nt like being gassed and shelled in the nasty trenches (most officers had safer quarters than the men in deep dug outs for instance )you were simply sent back to a soft job at the base..100s if not 1000 s of dud officers were found a cushy number in this way...two sets of rules..
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 11:38:33 +0000
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