1916: Captain Charles Fryatt, illegal combatant

ExecutedToday.com ^ | July 27, 2012 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1916, Captain Charles Fryatt was shot at Bruges, Belgium as an illegal combatant.

Fryatt was a 42-year-old civilian mariner captaining the SS Brussels on the Harwick-Hook of Holland route when, in March 1915, a German U-Boat ordered him to heave to.

Fryatt wheeled the Brussels around on the submarine and attempted to ram it. The German ship escaped by a whisker only by scrambling an emergency dive. The Admiralty gave Fryatt a gold watch and a pat on the head for bravery.

It was not until the following year that the Germans captured that same vessel with that same captain on board. When they realized who they had, they subjected him to a snap tribunal for violating the laws of war: he’d participated in combat (by trying to ram the U-Boat) whilst being not a member of his country’s armed forces. That made him an illegal combatant, a franc-tireur in the still-current term for a civilian partisan left over from the Franco-Prussian War.

The Germans mightily loathed such terrorists, feared they would bedevil their steps in Belgium and France: people not sporting enough to stay beaten, people with the effrontery to fight back without being a duly enrolled member of a nation-state’s standing army. They did not scruple to push an expansive line on the definition of civilian non-participation.....

[DesertRhino]

Murdered. When you break rules and invade a nation, it’s depraved to expect that the locals must treat you as legitimate and be careful not to harm you.

[Still Thinking]

Would you mind ringing up Uncle Touchy and let him know, please? Those seem to be his expectations.

[montag813]

It was sh*t like this that led to the godawful Versailles Treaty.

[Leaning Right]

> The Germans mightily loathed such terrorists... <

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

It’s a damn shame that Kaiser Wilhelm II let his generals call the shots on the days leading up to WW I. So much misery would have been avoided if Wilhelm had just told his generals to stand down.

But hey, the troops were already on the trains. Can’t stop it now! That’s what Wilhelm was told, anyways.

[Sixgun Symphony]

It appears that the laws of war at the time meant that the civilian skipper was an illegal combatant. Maybe he could have avoided being shot had he been a uniformed member of a paramilitary auxillary organization like our Civil Air Patrol?

[DesertRhino]

German subs made him a combatant by attacking his ship.

[GreyHoundSailor]

If he had been a uniformed member of anything, he would have been interrogated, tortured and hung.

[Mr Radical]

German subs made him a combatant by attacking his ship
Worth repeating!

On the 23rd/24th August 1914, at Dinant in Belgium, the Germans lined-up and shot and murdered more than 600 civilians including women with babes in arms. Hundreds more workers from the town were shipped off to Germany to be used as slave labour.
The Germans were never held to account for the atrocities and destruction done to neutral Belgium in the four years of occupation 1914-18.

[SES1066]

On the 23rd/24th August 1914, at Dinant in Belgium, the Germans lined-up and shot and murdered more than 600 civilians including women with babes in arms.

The Imperial Germans EARNED every calumny that led to their opponents calling them "The Butchering Hun" and it did not begin with neutral Belgium! In the Chinese Boxer Rebellion of 1901, the German forces then were infamous about their brutality! The Prussian culture that gave rise to the unified German Empire was brutal to its own people and that bled over into their treatment of their 'inferiors'!

Yes, the Versailles Treaty ending WW1 was one-sided in blaming Germany and did give easily roused fury to the German population afterwards BUT what is easily forgot is that there was no punishment required of the perpetrators of the above atrocities! Monetary reparations are a poor substitute to trial and hanging of the Huns that ordered such massacres!

[Tallguy]

Subs early-on were operating under “Cruiser-Rules”. They could order any merchant vessel to heave-to and be boarded for inspection. If any material was found for war-making the crew would be ordered off (usually man the lifeboats) and the ship would be scuttled or sunk via deck-gun (or torpedo).

An option from Days of Sail would have been to take the vessel as a prize, but submarine crews were too small for that.

When merchant crews began countering a surfaced sub (and early WW1 attacks were almost alway on the surface) then the subs started sinking without warning and attacking submerged.

The rules for submarine warfare were being invented on the fly.

[Mr Radical]

Before the First World War, Belgium was one of the most industrialised countries in the world; in the top 5 industrial exporters and top 10 wealth producers. After the German occupation of 1914-18 the country was in ruins and never recovered its position. The Germans were never made to compensate them, despite the 'reparations'.

I'm now coming round to the view that if the Germans had really been made to suffer afterwards, then maybe WW2 would have been avoided. I now understand why Churchill was so keen on the strategic bombing campaign in 1939-45. I wonder whether actually, after the 1914-18 war, the Allied powers had an eye to rebuilding Germany against the new communist threat from the east as well as within? So, Dawson plan instead of Marshall plan etc.

[dfwgator]

Before the First World War, Belgium was one of the most industrialised countries in the world; in the top 5 industrial exporters and top 10 wealth producers. After the German occupation of 1914-18 the country was in ruins and never recovered its position. The Germans were never made to compensate them, despite the 'reparations'.,

Karma for what King Leopold did in The Congo.

[M Kehoe]

“German subs made him a combatant by attacking his ship.”

Just like a blockade is an act of war, so is an attempted boarding or sinking of another nations Maritime vessels.

Oh, nevermind, Admiralty law and the Geneva Conventions haven’t occurred yet.

5.56mm

[Mr Radical]

King Leopold ran the Congo as his personal fiefdom. But was he or King Albert any worse than letting the Sudanese slave traders have free run?

[dfwgator]

Point being, there were no saints in Europe at the time.