Posted on 10/23/2005 9:49:41 PM PDT by 1066AD
The Times October 24, 2005
Daughter, 93, goes into battle for soldier who was shot as a 'coward' By David Sanderson
IN THE two years before Private Harry Farr was executed, he had served with distinction in the First World War.
A survivor of the Somme, he had gone over the top many times until in 1916 he protested that he could not go on. After a 20-minute court martial, he was shot for cowardice on October 18, aged 26. His daughter takes her 15-year campaign to clear his name to the High Court today, arguing that he had been suffering from acute post-traumatic stress disorder.
Gertrude Harris, 93, said evidence that her father had been suffering from shellshock and his good record had been ignored. Campaigners hope that the hearing will set a precedent for the families of the other 305 British soldiers shot for cowardice or desertion during the Great War.
Private Farr had been serving with the 2nd Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment in France. On October 2, 1916, as the regiment prepared to head for the front, Private Farr, who had just returned from five months in hospital being treated for shell shock, complained of feeling unwell.
When he asked for medical help, a Sergeant-Major is reported to have said: “If you don’t go up to the f****** front, I’m going to blow your f****** brains out.” Farr replied: “I just can’t go on.”
Mrs Harris, of Harrow, northwest London, said that the execution had been a “stigma” on their family, but her father had never shown cowardice. She said: “The court martial simply didn’t take into account the evidence of his illness or his previous good record.”
Her campaign began in 1990 when evidence from the court martial was released by the Ministry of Defence. Last year, after Geoff Hoon, then the Defence Secretary, refused a posthumous pardon, Mrs Harris sought a Judicial Review.
John Dickinson, of the law firm Irwin Mitchell, which will represent Mrs Harris at today’s hearing to decide whether a pardon will be granted, said that shell shock was now more widely understood as a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. He said: “The effects it had on soldiers was well known in the First World War and was often cited as a defence against a charge of cowardice because it could affect an individual’s responsibility for his action.”
The conditions at the front were terrible. Poor bugger was probably driven half mad.
It is a good thing that family loyalty persists, and that after all this time, there is someone to defend this man.
If he repeatedly performed acts of heroism in combat over a considerable period of time, then he's a hero, and that's that. Everyone, even heros, have limits. In my mind WWI was the most brutal and mentally taxing war American soldiers have ever been involved in, with the possible exception of some major battles in the Civil War.
People who repeatedly distinguish themselves as heros in combat do not become cowards when they simply 'can't go on anymore'. They become heros who have become mentally and emotionally burnt out. Bodies cave in to exhaustion, and so do minds. The poor man got shamefully shafted by his own government.
Well said.
A 20 minute Court-Martial is not due process and a stain on the honor of the British Army. Instead of a pardon, they should overturn the conviction and remove it from his record. Let him rest with a clean record.
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