Posted on 03/26/2024 2:56:21 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1915, “the sentences of the court-martial on a batch of 45 mutineers of the 5th Light Infantry were promulgated in public” — as the Straits Times reported — “and, in the case of 22 who were condemned to death, the sentences were executed on the spot.”
A crowd of fifteen thousand watched the spirited Indian sepoys shot dead for revolting the previous month.
This demoralized 800-strong garrison of Punjabi Muslims — who had, it need hardly be added, a noble history of insurrection to think upon — was already deployed far from home to look after the imperial interests of the London gentry while British lads mustered for bayonet charges in No Man’s Lands.
The last straw for these sepoys was a rumor that they were to be shipped to the European theater and made to turn their weapons against the Turkish sultan, their Muslim coreligionist.*
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Could have been blown from cannon, a la the 1857 Mutiny.
The British government and military is one nasty organization. Always has been and is still today.
A weird contrast to the genteel high-tea image so many people have of the UK.
There weren’t many militaries in those days that wouldn’t have executed mutinous soldiers in a time of war in 1915.
Yeah. And the British military is and has always been a particularly brutal and filthy bunch. Their treatment of colonial soldiers around the world was utterly abysmal.
US Army soldier who were in eastern India in WWII were disgusted by the way the British army threated the locals.
And both, I would add, were considerably less brutal than any non-European power, the Turks and Japanese being good examples.
French were bad, Belgians were horrible. Brits invented the concentration camp in South Africa.
mark
Probably as disgusted as British soldiers were by how the US Army treated it’s black soldiers :/
Probably as disgusted as British soldiers were by how the US Army treated it’s black soldiers :/
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