Mutiny at Etaples

War news in other areas was censored too - this time by the government. Troop mutinies like the one at Etaples in France in September 1917 were referred to as mob riots. It was considered unpatriotic to report anything which might damage morale. The truth about the Etaples mutiny has only come to light decades after it took place. Some 3000 - 4000 British soldiers rebelled at their appalling training conditions and shot dead six military policemen. The MPs were the most hated men in the Etaples training camp, responsible for its severe discipline. The mutineers rampaged through the town, raping Frenchwomen and British nurses and members of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. Ten of the leaders of the mutiny were executed.

Soldiers were also shot for cowardice and desertion. Taking part in the execution of a fellow soldier was an experience which haunted one man for the rest of his life, as he revealed sixty-one years later:

The victim was brought out from a shed and led struggling to a chair to which he was then bound and a white handkerchief placed over his heart as our target area ...

The tears were rolling down my cheeks as he went on attempting to free himself from the ropes attaching him to the chair. I aimed blindly and when the gunsmoke had cleared away we were horrified to see that, although wounded, the intended victim was still alive. Still blindfolded, he was attempting to make a run for it still strapped to the chair. The blood was running freely from a chest wound. An officer in charge stepped forward to put the finishing touch with a revolver to the poor man's temple.

He had only cried out once and that was when he shouted the one word 'Mother'. He could not have been very much older than me. We were told later he had been suffering from shell-shock, a condition not recognised by the army in 1917.

From W. Allison and J. Fairley, The Monocled Mutineer, 1979

Neil Demarco: Britain and the Great War; Oxford University Press, 1992/2000, page 28