Patrick Downey Shot At Dawn.

R.Dub.Fusilier

i was reading "They Shall Not Grow Old" by Myles Dungan and in a chapter on shell shock in a section about men shot at dawn i came upon a soldier name Patrick Downey 227 6th Leinster Regiment. Patrick was shot by a firing squad made up of men from his own division , the 10th Irish division. his medal index card states "sentenced to death , carried out 27-12-15" and what was the crime he was shot for ? his cap fell from his head and landed in the mud , when ordered by an officer to pick up the cap covered in freezing mud he refused . that was his crime. a volunteer who joined the army to fight for a cause ,we can asume he believed in, was shot for disobedience .

Patrick didn't leave his post , he was not a coward who left his comrades to fight and die while he ran away to safety. his crime was minor in the extreme. his sentence was rubber stamped by Sir Bryan Mahon the commander of the 10th Irish division who resigned his commision in Gallopili and left his division without a commander for a while when his men were being slaughtered and needed him most.

Patrick Downey deserved better than he received. he face the bullets and bombs of the turkish and hungarian armies and in the end met his death by the hand of a comrade.

http://www.shotatdawn.info/page18.html

http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/340764/DOWNEY,%20PATRICK%20JOSEPH

Morlar

That's absolutely incredible. Was he one of those Irishmen executed by the WWI era British Army for whom a pardons was recieved ?

johnny_doyle

the officer in charge of the court martial was Capt (later Major) Robert Otway Mansergh from Ballyhooley, Co Cork.

R.Dub.Fusilier

Morlar i think he was one of those pardoned.

Patrick Downey had first joined the Munster Fusiliers but was later transfered into the Leinsters. the incident that he was charged with apparently happened when he was just finished another punishment , he had been tied to a cart wheel for two hours when his cap fell.

he admitted he was guilty as charged to " On active service disobeying a lawful command given personally by his superior officer in execution of his office "
but unknown to him the charge was changed to " On active service disobeying a lawful command in such a manner as to show wilful disobedience of authority given personally by his superior officer in the execution of his office" which carried the death sentence. as far as i remember under military law, at the time, a defendent can not plead guilty to a charge if there was a possablity of the death sentence. Patrick was not told that the charge had been changed. Willie Pearse also plead guilty at his trial but again under military law he was not allowed to.

four or five others were charged with the same offence at the same time but it was only Patrick who was shot. at the time there was a issue with discipline and order had to be restored. it is no wonder that discipline was lax when you think of the conditions the 10th division were fighting under, they had just come from Gallopili where the food was bad disease was common and lack nof water was a problem and then land in Salonika bad weather bad food disease and tropical uniforms in winter, i think it is reasonable to be a little bit p***ed off.

Mahon said " Under ordinary circumstances I would have hesitated to recommend that the capital sentence awarded be put into effect as a plea of guilty has been erroneously accepted by the court , but the condition of discipline in the battalion is such as to render an exemplary punishment highly desirable and I therefore hope that the Commander-in-Chief will see fit to approve the sentenceof death in this instance."

as can be seen from Mahons comment he knew Patrick Downey was wrongly convicted and found guilty and was going to suffer to make an example of him.

Major Mansergh is related to Martin Mansergh TD through his grandmother who was a cousin of the good Major.

arnhem44

It really beggars belief that most of these men were shot for no good reason.I believe that other countries were even more severe and numbers were higher than that of the British.My own Great Grandfather was tried by field general court martial for been drunk while on parade,to think he could of met the same fate as those who were shot but like thousands of others he was given a different punishment,his been merely demoted to the ranks.