The Other Side Of WWI: The Men Who Were Shot At Dawn | Timeline

To Flanders, will you? My bonnie Ma, there we lie Suckin' sugar candy Oh, will you go to Flanders? My Ma When you get to Flanders Ma, you see the ball come up My bonnie Ma, you see the ball You'll hear the ladies cry And the soldiers will be dying My Ma April 21st, 1915 Dear mother and father, sisters and brothers Just a few lines to let you know I'm in the best of health And hope you are too, mother I'm sorry to tell you That we are to be shot tomorrow at 7 o'clock in the morning I hope you will take it in good part and not upset yourself I shall die like a soldier So goodbye mother, father, sisters, brothers if any left I have wrote my last letter to you all at home So mother, don't be angry with me Because I have gone to rest And pray for me, and I will do the same for you Think how we had been slaughtered at the beginning of the war You would think they would have a bit of pity and mercy For those who are living and fighting for their country Goodbye to all at home Goodbye Goodbye from your son Albert Private Albert Troughton, 1st Royal Welsh Fusiliers Over a million British and Commonwealth soldiers lost their lives in World War I They left behind families and friends Who though devastated by their loss Could mourn them with pride They were, after all, good men Who died honourably fighting for their country Their sacrifice would never be forgotten But the sacrifice of others has been forgotten Though they died as soldiers on the killing fields of the Great War Their deaths remain the most shameful and secretive chapter of British military history They are the unremembered The 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers Who were executed under the orders of their own army For so-called acts of cowardice, desertion and disobedience These men died for the sake of example The brutal idea that in order to fight Men needed the discipline of fear It didn't matter if they were sick or shell-shocked or under-aged It didn't even matter if they were innocent Somebody had to be singled out Somebody had to be shot at dawn Today, the last battle of the war to end all wars Is still being fought Year after year, there have been calls to restore honour To the names of the executed men With a posthumous pardon These calls still go unanswered Eighty years on from the armistice We remember these men And the pain of the families they left behind Mother told me that Dad was shot for cowardice And I just... Well, I couldn't believe what I was hearing Because in my mind, my father had been shot by the Germans And obviously, he wasn't, was he? And that was a terrible shock to me When I first read the court-martial papers I was absolutely shocked to think Any man could be shot as an example There was a necessity To make an example of an officer Because other ranks were complaining That no officer so up-to-date had been shot But I think he was the first one to be shot So they chose a lot of young boys To use as examples But there again What rights did they have to do that? There's nobody on this earth got the right to take another man's life Or a boy's life as easily as they took theirs Through the memories of survivors The tragedy of the Great War still remains in our minds Robert Burns is one of the survivors He lied about his age to enlist in 1914 with the Cameron Highlanders He will be 103 years old this week In the army, you're asked to do something If you don't do it You're in trouble And we, youngsters We were afraid To do anything wrong Because the discipline was so strict Whatever it was we were asked to do, we had to do it Or else You scramble over the top You just don't know where you're going You don't know what's waiting for you You know the Germans are in front of you And you just go over You have your rifle, you have your bayonet on it And you just don't know what's happened And then you go over and you say to The chap on your right What's the matter, where are we going? What's next? And this fellow would say Say something And I turned round after that The chap I was running forward with, he's not there And I say, so and so, where is he? And I look round and this chap's gone too He's had it So, there's two Next to me, one on my left, one on my right They've had it I was the lucky one The bullet, or the part of the shell It got them, not me, I was the lucky one And all along you'd see the chaps going over the top And then you'd see them fall down And the longer we'd go on, the fewer are left of them Some of them were unlucky They got it, they're going forward That's the horrific side of war If I hadn't done what I was told to do Probably I would have been shot I didn't see anybody shot But we heard about it But you can imagine The state of mind of someone Who didn't know where he was And he was asked to do a job And some little NCO Or a young officer say That man's no good to us, shoot him And that's what would happen Procedures for military executions in the British Army Time of execution The best time is shortly after dawn Place of execution Should be secluded and as nearest possible to the place of confinement The firing party will consist of one officer, one sergeant And up to twelve rank and file from the prisoner's unit On arrival, the firing party will ground arms And be marched a short distance away So that they cannot see their arms Meanwhile, the officer will unload two rifles And reload them with blank ammunition The rank and file alone will fire The officer will change the places of the rifles The firing party will then be marched back to their rifles And will take up arms and remain perfectly still The officer will satisfy himself as to the identity of the prisoner The prisoner may be shot either standing up Or strapped to a post or tied to a chair The main object is to carry out the sentence as rapidly and humanely as possible Military executions, at the best of times Are a brutal and inhumane business One which almost defies belief Involve the execution of three undersized soldiers From the 35th Bantam Division These soldiers, who were serving with the 19th Durham Light Infantry Were shot simultaneously by a firing squad of 36 of their comrades One of the men who was executed was a volunteer A miner, Peter Goggins Lance Corporal Peter Goggins was charged with leaving his post Without the permission of a senior officer His alleged offense was committed in no man's land During the panic and confusion of a surprise enemy night attack When he and several comrades retreated 20 yards to a reserve trench His commanding officer acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence for a conviction Despite this, he recommended the death sentence Peter Goggins and two of his comrades Were shot at dawn on the 18th of January 1917 He was one of six men, selected as an example And executed during the war for quitting their posts 76 other men sentenced to death for the same military offense Escaped execution As an only son, the Goggins name died with him Peter's niece Marina Brewis Carries on the fight for justice for her uncle And the other executed men When I heard that the government weren't going to give them a pardon I was very disappointed I know you can't change history But you could add on to history I think it would take a brave government to do it And they weren't brave enough It's nice to come back again And see my Uncle Peter again And Corporal MacDonald And Sergeant Stone And it's nice to know that they're all lying side by side I've brought flowers for all three Because there were three good soldiers The four together And they were all shot together And they died together I knew that he had been killed in the First World War I didn't know how But I knew there was something in it Because at one time my brother had brought it up And my mother had gotten so upset and cried She calmed down and said One day I'll tell you about it But she never did When I found out he had been shot I felt terrible Should I be ashamed? Should I not do anything about it and not let on? Do I want my neighbours to know? When I read the papers Well I just thought they'd been murdered I was absolutely shocked to think Any man could be shot as an example He had been charged with Leaving his post without the permission of a senior officer Now we had heard a command saying Run for your lives, the Hun are upon us And of course all the others had run So he did And I think they ran 20 yards Now to me that was retreating And the own CO said That although there wasn't enough evidence to prove The case against them He thought that it was a good idea For them to pay the ultimate price as an example Because the 19th DLI were doing so badly But the whole lot were doing badly at the time And it never, it didn't improve the war You know, they didn't all start running over the top Because they had shot a few You know, it made no difference They were just wasted And I mean the Uncle Peter at 21 He was a corporal so he hadn't been bad had he And they said they were all good soldiers So I think they had been as good as any at that time Peter Goggins was just carrying out orders The reasons why he was executed seemed to me to be a dark business It's as though the generals believed in a form of military eugenics Of killing off physical and moral degenerates as they called them The generals never questioned their own judgement Or their own inadequacies Instead it was people like Peter Goggins that had to pay the price The padre who spent the last night with them Said, three braver men I have never met And then there was a I don't think I can tell you that part There was an eyewitness account From a soldier who had to clear up the snow Because it was covered in blood And it had to be done Before the French peasants got up in the morning You know, it was terrible And if they think that made men fight any harder You know, it was just It's just terrible As a military prisoner I helped clear away the traces of that triple murder I set the posts down They were used to cook next morning's breakfast for the military police The ropes were used in the stables 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 military police Guffawed at the loving terms of good cheer from the dead men's wives And then their silence after reading one letter from a little girl To dear daddy I really would have wanted me Uncle Peter and his comrades To be exonerated That's how much I wanted a pardon Because I don't think they'd done anything wrong They were living to fight another day They might have been killed in the war still But they were going on to fight I think they should be honoured with En masse, with everybody, you know We don't want them singled out No, we don't want them singled out We want them to To be honoured with all their comrades, yes One of the things that was most disturbing About the whole business of executions in the First World War Is the defence that's still extended by the government That it was OK to shoot anybody aged over 14 So they picked on the weak, the most hapless The illiterate, the ones that remained silent And the kids That's one of the most disturbing aspects of this whole business Youngsters joined up at 16, 17, 18 They weren't meant to serve overseas until they were at least 19 But we got people like Joseph Byers, a 16-year-old Scots lad Who was put on trial for his life Undefended He pleaded guilty Pleaded guilty to a capital charge Effectively committed suicide And you might have thought That a general would have reflected upon this and said Well, he's a youngster and that's it But no, no, what they thought was If you're old enough to join the army And you're old enough to desert Then you're old enough to be executed And Joseph Byers was taken out and shot And I happened to be wandering up on some job I was sent to do And I came across a tent which looked unusual And it looked as though there was a guard on it And as I went by A chap walked out holding a Westin And he gave me a delightful smile I can see his face now as though it was only yesterday A very good-looking chap Didn't look as though he was distressed in the slightest way And went and emptied his Westin And it wasn't until I'd walked a little bit further away That some chap said to me Do you see that chap there? He's from the firing squad And I just couldn't believe it Whilst at this camp, a sad thing occurred At dawn one morning, Tommy came out under escort He was taken a stone's throw from camp And they sat him in a chair And after a piece of white paper had been pinned over his heart He was blindfolded And then shot We wondered if some mother or wife would mourn him as missing You could be shot for just about anything One man went on parade with a dirty rifle He was criticised for it by his officer He kicked the officer in the shins He was court-martialed Found guilty Taken out and executed Ah, and there was Paddy Downing Young Irish fella in Salonica You'd been told to put his hat on But it was wet, so you refused He was charged And his trial must be the shortest in British military history It covers about half a side of A4 paper Paddy was undefended He pleaded guilty He was sentenced to death They took him out and they tied him to a tree Facing him was a firing squad made up of mates from his own unit He called out to one of them He said, Jim, I get a good one And then he laughed And he said, this is a bit of a joke You take me all the way out here to fight the enemy And then you shoot me There's a savage irony there Private Harry Farr Had served on the Western Front for almost two years When he broke down from the strain on the way to the trenches He was dragged screaming to the front line All the time refusing to go any further And was arrested and court-martialed for cowardice Though he had previously spent five months in hospital with shell shock No medical evidence was called at his trial The Army High Command did not hesitate in ordering his execution Harry Farr, a married man with a two-year-old daughter Was executed on the Somme at 6am on 18 October 1916 He was 25 years old He has no known grave On Armistice Day, my mother always had to watch the procession And the laying of the wreaths And when she used to see the old veterans walking along She said, my Harry should have been there with them He should have been up there to be honoured for what he did for his country My mother had a letter from the War Office And in it it just said, we wish to inform you That your husband was shot for cowardice on 18 October 1916 And that was all that she had, nothing else And she said she had a blouse on at the moment And she pushed the letter down in her blouse And she never told anyone I didn't want nobody to know what happened I thought it was so terrible I thought it was so awful I thought it was on my shoulders all that stigma That's how I felt And neither my dear mother didn't know, nor his mother Not till the time come when my pension was stopped Then I had to tell them Because they wanted to know why I was looking so ill And how upset I was And I had to tell them Where she was living in her lodgings The landlady said, well I'm awfully sorry Gertrude But you'll just have to go And we were virtually homeless We were turned out into the street And she was advised to go to the Soldiers and Sailors Association And they said, well first of all the child will have to go into a home So mother said, no, that I'll never do You've taken my husband but you're not taking my child I'm going to keep her with me Soon after mother had had her letter from the war office She said she had the vicar from her local church in North Kensington And he had been asked by the chaplain Who was at the execution of my father And he said, will you tell his wife He was no coward He wouldn't even have a blindfold And she always said that the finest soldier never lived And I think they were the words that she carried to her grave My grandfather joined the West Yorkshire Regiment in 1908 As a regular soldier And in 1914 he was recalled to Colours And was sent with his regiment out to France With the British Expeditionary Force He was hospitalised for five months in May With shell shock, and it was called shell shock in those days And that was the last time my grandmother got a letter from Harry And the letter was actually penned by the nurse Because Harry was unable to hold the pen He was shaking too much After the five months in hospital He was sent back to rejoin his unit He was obviously very traumatised at what was going on Because he said that when he was away from the gunfire He felt okay It was only when he got near to the sound of the gunfire That he started trembling And then in September He was going with a Russian party up to the front And he fell out sick He was told, well you can't see a doctor because you're actually wounded He was dragged screaming and kicking to the front All the time saying how sick he felt And he wanted to see a medical officer Well eventually he was put on court-martial It lasted approximately 20 minutes And in my grandfather's case he was undefended And he said that he was sick And they never took into account his previous medical record Where he'd been in hospital for five months Some of the reports sort of contradict themselves One was saying that he was dragged to the front And he was no good and he'd run away And the other one was saying he was asking for help And he wanted to see a medical officer And my grandfather had been out there almost two years So he'd been a coward He would not have wanted to carry on for two years in those dreadful conditions He'd have given up a lot earlier than that Nobody likes the sound of the guns Some people physically couldn't stand it Harry Farr couldn't stand it He'd been shell-shocked And when he went on trial he told the court-martial That he couldn't stand the sound of the guns When they asked him And they replied, well, you look physically all right to us now And he said, yes, I'm nowhere near the guns Now, that sounds pretty logical to me But it didn't strike them as being logical They sentenced him to death And he was taken out and shot A fine, regular British soldier And an appalling waste of a human life Haig signed the death warrant for my grandfather And in most of the cases he signed the papers So, I mean, they went through several processes Before they actually had the final signature And I don't think Haig ever refused one I think in one he said, well, if we let this man off You know, how are we going to control the rest of the men? After Sir Douglas Haig became commander-in-chief on the Western Front In December 1915 He confirmed 239 of the 306 executions For military offences during the war Including 23 Canadian and four New Zealand soldiers Three men every two weeks until the armistice The Germans only executed 25 men for similar offences During the whole of the war Haig had little in common with the troops under his command No real understanding of their lives Or the horrendous conditions on the front line With a huge loss of life Suffered by his forces in Flanders and on the Somme He soon earned the notorious nickname Butcher Haig But Haig didn't always have it his own way He made repeated requests To be allowed to use the death penalty On what he regarded as the ill-disciplined Australian troops under his command Despite promising to use it sparingly on them The Australian government refused him permission The Australians remained the only army Not to allow the execution of its men during the war These Flanders fields Were the scene of many bloody battles With up to 600,000 casualties After 80 years The hundreds of cemeteries and monuments to a wasted generation Still have the power to move those who journey here The people of Flanders Remember all those who were victims of the war Their city of Ypres Now known as the town of peace Was completely destroyed Behind the front line near Ypres Was the town of Poppery With its casualty clearing stations and rest and recreation facilities To most soldiers it was a town of safety But Poppery and its surroundings Were used by the British army for a darker purpose The trial and execution of at least 50 soldiers In the Poppering new military cemetery 16 executed British and Canadian soldiers are buried Together with a 17 year old Jamaican ammunition carrier Herbert Morris More executed men lie in this graveyard than anywhere else on the western front All of their lives ending with a single word from Butcher Haig Confirmed Poppering town hall was taken over by the British army Courts martial were held in the council chamber The defendants were held in the cells below These cells were used as death cells throughout the war And it's on beds like this that the British soldiers were Spending their final night Often in great distress Often asking for help by either a padre or an army chaplain Or in more cases even a doctor Who would then drug them to get them through their final hours The condemned men could see from two of these cells The courtyard and had a view of the post Where the execution was going to take place Which is a gruesome thought That they had to witness that as well The dead cells were almost in their original state All we did was wash down the layers of paint And suddenly there appeared hundreds of names And other graffiti of the period Second Lieutenant Eric Poole Was one of three British officers to be executed during the war And he spent his last night in here Before he was executed Second Lieutenant Eric Poole Was the first officer to be executed in the war A recent victim of shell shock He went missing for two days He was arrested after asking a military policeman For directions back to his division Officers in his condition were normally sent home But not Poole Despite the evidence of witnesses That he was in a deep state of confusion And not responsible for his actions He was convicted of desertion And sentenced to death Eric Poole was shot at first light On the 10th of December 1916 I found out about his execution purely by chance And I thought, I really don't want to know I don't want to know that my uncle was shot for desertion And then I thought it out And I thought, yes, I do want to know I want to find out And I think the fact that my family Didn't ever talk about the war They must have felt an awful sense of shame Because at that time it just was a very shameful thing To have your courage questioned And it must have been absolutely devastating That such a thing should have taken place Really, it was almost putting him down Wasn't it, to suit the circumstances of the time? Well, when I read through the court-martial papers Of my uncle, Eric Poole It's almost unbelievable It really is astonishing That anybody could even have had a court-martial Because there's no... In no way do they show that he Sort of shirked his duty Or accepted that under extreme pressure He had, and feeling rotten He had absented himself All the witnesses state That he was in a confused state And nobody else says he was anything but confused His brigadier said I do not consider this man Should even be submitted to a court-martial And that he should be sent home Where he could be useful He was not suited to active service And in the past, before his wounding He had been perfectly satisfactory It was about time an officer was executed Poole was a Canadian He hadn't gone to public school There'd be no ruptions on the old boy network He was a bit of an outsider He'd been shell-shocked But that was discounted by the court He fitted the bill One of our men had absented himself From the front line On two occasions When a battle had started They court-martialed him And sentenced him to death By a firing squad And I thought Well, I'll try to help this fellow a bit So I took down a cup full of brandy He said Well, I've never drunk spirits in my life There's no point in me starting now That, to me Was a sort of spurious sort of courage, in a way The following morning He was to shot at dawn As he left the hut His legs gave way Then one could see the fear entering his heart He was dragged along And the unpleasant task The colonel set me Was to pin on his heart A piece of flannel So that they'd give the marks From something to fire at He had his hands tied behind his back His eyes were bandaged And the firing squad were given the order to fire Fire! When they fired He fell to the ground I didn't know whether he was dead or not And I was very anxious about that But at that moment The sergeant in charge stepped forward Put a revolver to his head And that was the coup de grace Which always carried out in these cases It was common knowledge That the war would be over in six months So a lot of us said Well, six months would be a lovely holiday for us So that's one reason I joined up It was more or less excitement I was too young to be really patriotic But facing our window There was a poster of Kitchener Pointing his finger at everybody Your king and country need you No matter how you looked at that poster His finger seemed to point at you It wasn't a picnic To start off with it was alright But when you got near the front line The ground was peppered with shell holes Some had water in them And then there were trenches Which had been occupied before that And we saw these And then we gradually initiated Into what we could expect The trenches were nice and dry When we got into them And we could hear the larks Fluttering around and coming down Taking crumbs of biscuit off the trenches It was so peaceful Then the fire The guns would start again Then we started to get the wind up And if one landed near us Then we got really the wind up It would land near the trench It would upset the earth The earth would fall in And we'd have to build the side of the trench up again That's when it was dry But when it was wet it was terrible It was really awful There was a stench about the trenches Which forever remained in the nostrils It was common to all trenches An amalgam of many things The smell of cordite Of gas And rotting vegetation And only too often The putrefying smell of rotting bodies For men were often buried Where they fell in shallow graves The trenches also became a playground for rats Huge and evil looking They never failed to conjure up a picture of death And desolation So many bodies scattered around You got used to it As the time went on They were probably lying there for weeks And weeks and weeks And that's the horrible side of war If we ever came across anybody who was injured We were not allowed to attend to them The regimental stretcher bearers Would be the ones who would attend to the wounded We were supposed to go straight on and do the job We were enlisted for Men lay in the open where they fell Unable to move Crying out for help if they had the strength With no one to hear them For a battleground was not always gone over Until three days or four days after an attack Others would die in excruciating pain Before they could reach the dressing station And in the most infernal circumstances You were stunned by one ear-splitting crash after another There fell a continuous hail of shell splinters Lumps of earth A perfect shower of dust If you sat or lay down You would probably be powerless Unable to move Crushed And buried alive It was continuous exposure to conditions like these That caused many soldiers to crack Private Billy Nelson A teenager from County Durham Had served on the Western Front for almost a year When he disappeared for three days As his unit was about to go into the trenches Billy had no one to defend him at his trial In pleading for his life he explained to the court That he had been in a state of nervous collapse When he had absented himself Private Nelson was found guilty of desertion And shot by firing squad At 5.15am on the 11th of August, 1916 Nora High is Billy's niece She has travelled to the Somme To visit his grave for the first time Come remembrance day I also remember from being a young girl My mother Used to get this little piece of material out Put a Bible My uncle Billy, her brother His Bible on there And a coat button that his friend brought back That was all that came back from him And every Armistice Day And every 11th of August When Billy, as she said, was murdered Not executed She called it murder And she would sit And she would break her heart Those two days every year For 78 years I'm here I've lost it I'm here for mum I've got your Bible And I've got all the things Mum's poppy that she bought The second year after you were gone She was only 15 And she's kept it for 8 years 8 years Billy And she loved you You loved your mum And you loved your sister and brother Whom you never saw grow up You never had the chance to grow up To know a mother's love A wife's love Or a family You didn't have that chance They took it away from you And God forgive them Because I never will Nor would mum We love you We'll never forget you We'll always be remembered You're so dear to mum Right Sweet uncle I found out about my uncle Billy I was in the ATS at the time And I came home when I was about 20 I'd related a story to my mother About a young chap that I'd seen Killed in action Standing beside me And she said Well you know how your uncle Billy died Don't you? And I said well he was killed in the war She said well not shot by the enemy And her very words imprinted on my mind Were he was shot by our own side In my uncle's case He was a volunteer Just about the onset of the war And when he did his training In the south of England He came back home to find his mother Had had a heart attack At 42 From which he died His father was in prison of war So William didn't have a father to turn to He didn't have anybody that could help him With this funeral and all the arrangements Which meant he left a sister 12 coming up 13 And a young brother 9 And they had to go into homes So that boy went out there Served 11 months in the trenches His mind was on his mother Whom he'd buried in England But it was too much stress Too much strain All the blood, the filth The horror of war And that's where it all went wrong Sometimes the stress of soldiers' home circumstances Was worse than what they faced on the battlefield In the case of Billy Nelson His mother had died And he, a very, very young soldier Was taking responsibility Looking after the rest of his family But instead of being at home with them He was on the battlefield of Luse One of the most ill-directed, butchers' picnics of a battle It is possibly conceivable to imagine A battle in which the British gas Drifted back over the attacking formations In which British battalions were firing at one another In which the military commanders Lost control of the situation And as a consequence Tens of thousands of men's lives were wasted 25th September 1915 The Battle of Luse The gunfire was terrific We had to climb up over the trench and go forward With a rifle made up facing the Germans We could actually see the Germans putting shells in their guns Then the first bang would come along It exploded soon after getting out So many bodies scattered around At the end of the day There were only about 80 of us left Out of about 6 or 7 hundred The others were taken away to a hospital Or there were proper casualties out But at the end of that day There were only about 80 of us left Billy Nelson had been wounded in the Battle of Luse He'd been shot in the hand The officers at his trial Regarded this as being very suspicious They thought it might be a self-inflicted wound And we know this because In the trial papers the words In the hand are underlined in thick red crayon It's the only thing in the entire trial papers That's underlined They were also worried about the state of discipline In his battalion because they'd lost a lot of officers And they thought that the men needed stiffening up a bit And so they thought they'd have somebody shot And the poor beggar concerned was Billy Nelson If he had to go, it's a tender age Where else is better than this to lie? It's beautiful He couldn't be in a better place Although he shouldn't be here He should be home He should have been home Remembered? Have I? Yes Oh, it's gorgeous, isn't it? Oh, please Two hundred and twelve executions after Nelson's And four days before the armistice Haig committed his final brutal act of the war In full knowledge that the Germans were about to surrender He had two more soldiers shot by firing squad Today, 80 years on And despite a greater understanding of combat stress And the failings of the army's wartime legal system We are still refusing to deal with the legacy of this barbarity This year, over 300 MPs supported calls by the families for pardons For all the executed men The government rejected them The fight to clear their names goes on Well, the only thing you can do is a pardon But you can't bring the chaps back and say we're sorry And give them the years that they lost You just can't do that, can you? Why shouldn't they be pardoned? They should have been pardoned Even a deserter, in my opinion Most of them would be pardoned Because... Why did he desert? Because he had seen something happen He was afraid He came out, he volunteered to do something Or he was conscripted to do it And he did his best Until he was asked to do something that he thought was wrong Why shoot him? This issue isn't new People have raised it in the 1930s and the 1970s and the 1980s And now in the 1990s As we approach the millennium, it has to be settled now We can't keep upholding the values of Victorian army staff officers If there is anything that gives me particular outrage about this whole business It is that the men themselves were volunteers They volunteered to give their lives to fight to defend this country To fight this country's enemies And their lives were squandered by a bunch of courts martial officers Who couldn't see brave men when they were standing there in front of them Every minute of every day of the war Four soldiers died 5,600 men a day From all nations for more than four years Of the 70 million soldiers who put on a uniform Over 9 million of them never came home At the first Armistice Day ceremony in London in 1920 The nation was still unable to come to terms with its enormous loss The planned two minutes of silence Was overwhelmed by a surge of uncontrolled grief and despair From the gathered crowds For all those whose lives had been lost The nation promised that their great sacrifice Would never be forgotten We would like to go up to the cenotaph And lay a wreath In remembrance of my grandfather And all the other 306 that were executed Just to remember them And say that they were just as much victims of that war Except they were executed by their own They went to fight for their country And their lives were taken And I don't feel I could forgive or Or go along with these people who want to forget I won't forget I feel proud of all the men who died in the wars You know, I feel It's the right kind of thing I like to say, oh, Mr. Sundeer You know, I like to go to church And I think it is brilliant And it's a shame that We have this stain on our history Because I really do think it is a stain on our history And it could have been put right Will you go to my mine Will you, my bonnie mine There we'll suck and sugar candy Or will you go to the flying man Will you go to the flying smiling man Will you see the sergeant crawling And the soldiers how they're falling My man