Punishment used against military personnel in active duty
Field punishment is any form of punishment used against military personnel in the field; that is, field punishment does not require that the member be incarcerated in a military prison or reassigned to a punishment battalion. It may be formalised under a system of military law and may be a sentence imposed in a court martial or similar proceedings
In English language contexts, "field punishment" refers specifically to Field Punishment Number One, which was used by the British Army between 1881 and 1923 and the armies of some other British Empire countries.
British Army
1881–1923
Contemporary illustration of Field Punishment Number One
Field Punishment was introduced in 1881 following the abolition of flogging. It was a common punishment during World War I. A commanding officer could award field punishment for up to 28 days, while a court martial could award it for up to 90 days, either as Field Punishment Number One or Field Punishment Number Two.
Field Punishment Number One, often abbreviated to "F.P. No. 1", "No. 1 field", or even just "No. 1", consisted of the convicted man being placed in fetters and handcuffs or similar restraints and attached to a fixed object, such as a gun wheel or a fence post, for up to two hours per day. During the early part of World War I, the punishment was often applied with the arms stretched out and the legs tied together, giving rise to the nickname "crucifixion". This was applied for up to three days out of four, up to 21 days total. It was usually applied in field punishment camps set up for this purpose a few miles behind the front line, but when the unit was on the move it would be carried out by the unit itself. It has been alleged that this punishment was sometimes applied within range of enemy fire. During World War I Field Punishment Number One was issued by the British Army on 60,210 occasions.[1]
Conscientious objectors who had been conscripted to the army were treated the same as any other soldier, so when they consistently refused to obey orders they were usually given Field Punishment No. 1. Alfred Evans, who was sent to France where he would be sentenced to death (later commuted) with 34 others claimed that "it was very uncomfortable, but certainly not humiliating". Some conscientious objectors even saw F.P. No. 1 as a badge of honour.
Although the 1914 Manual of Military Law specifically stated that Field Punishment should not be applied in such a way as to cause physical harm, in practice abuses were commonplace. For example, the prisoner would deliberately be placed in stress positions, with his feet not fully touching the ground, or the punishment would be applied in driving rain or snow. The New Zealand conscientious objector Archibald Baxter gave a particularly graphic account of his experience with Field Punishment No. 1 in his autobiography "We Will Not Cease". Baxter's story was dramatised in the 2014 TV movie Field Punishment No 1.[2][3]
In Field Punishment Number Two, the prisoner was placed in fetters and handcuffs but was not attached to a fixed object and was still able to march with his unit. This was a relatively tolerable punishment.
In both forms of field punishment, the soldier was also subjected to hard labour and loss of pay.
Field Punishment Number One was eventually abolished in 1923, when an amendment to the Army Act which specifically forbade attachment to a fixed object was passed by the House of Lords.[4] However, physical restraint remained a theoretical (though rarely imposed) possibility.
Other examples
Australian & New Zealand forces during the Vietnam War
According to author Paul Ham, Australian soldiers caught asleep on sentry duty in the Vietnam War, would be sentenced to 28 days' field punishment usually in the form of hard labour and would lose one week's pay.[5] On its first tour of Vietnam the Australian 105th Field Battery came under much media scrutiny as a result of the “O’Neill affair”. In February 1966 20-year-old Gunner Peter O’Neill, who had been absent without leave when rostered for guard duty, failed to appear on a field punishment parade. The battery commander, Major Peter Tedder had ordered O’Neill to be handcuffed to a metal stake in a weapons pit for 20 days at the Bien Hoa airbase. Gunner O'Neill contends that Major Tedder refused his right to a trial by Court Martial as a result he refused the Major's punishment[6] but he was released and flown to serve time in the army prison at Holsworthy outside Sydney when questions were raised in the Australian parliament.[7] Following a visit by Gough Whitlam and a vote in parliament he was released forthwith. Major Tedder was Court Martialed but acquitted as Gunner O'Neill did not give evidence and the illegal punishment had been condoned by a Superior officer. To date Gunner O'Neill has not told his side of the story.
New Zealand servicemen that served in the Vietnam War with V Force (Vietnam Force) were not exempt from field punishment with some being locked inside large shipping containers for considerable time in the sweltering heat.[8]
Argentine forces in the Malvinas/Falklands war
According to Ernesto Alonso, a senior member of the Centre of Former Malvinas Islands Combatants in La Plata (CECIM), Argentine officers and NCOs ordered the staking out of several conscripts during the Falklands War.[9] Most were 10th Brigade conscripts, and either had fallen asleep during guard duty or had gone absent without leave from their companies to either hunt sheep with their service rifles or steal from the food depots and locals in Port Stanley.
French Foreign Legion
The French Foreign Legion had its own field punishment. A legionnaire in the 1990s, Gareth Carins witnessed this punishment. While in training, a recruit called Schuhmann was caught deserting the training camp. Carins in the book Voices of the Foreign Legion: The French Foreign Legion in Its Own Words described how he saw Schuhmann slumped at the bottom of a flag pole: "His wrists had been bound together behind the flag pole, as had his ankles, so that it was impossible to stand up, and he was forced into a sort of kneeling position. I could see blood on the side of his face." In the book Mouthful of Rocks: Through Africa and Corsica in the French Foreign Legion former legionnaire and author Chris Jennings writes that recruits, as a form of punishment, had to dig graves in frozen soil, where the man would then spend the night, buried up to his neck.
Notes
↑ Holmes, Richard. Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, Harper Collins, 2004, p. 558
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military–industrial complex due to a crisis of conscience. In some countries, conscientious objectors are assigned to an alternative civilian service as a substitute for conscription or military service.
Desertion is the abandonment of a military duty or post without permission and is done with the intention of not returning. This contrasts with unauthorized absence (UA) or absence without leave, which are temporary forms of absence.
A conscription crisis is a public dispute about a policy of conscription, or mandatory service in the military, known in US English as a "draft". A dispute can become a crisis when submission to military service becomes highly controversial and popular revolt ensues. From the point of view of military officials, the crisis is one of supply; where they may claim to lack enough troops to accomplish a military objective, and have, to some degree, lost control of their political ability to enforce existing conscription law.
Conscription in Australia, also known as National Service following the Second World War, has a controversial history which dates back to the implementation of compulsory military training and service in the first years of Australia's nationhood. Military conscription for peacetime service was abolished in 1972.
Military service is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, air forces, and naval forces, whether as a chosen job (volunteer) or as a result of an involuntary draft (conscription).
The Federal Republic of Germany had conscription (Wehrpflicht) for male citizens between 1956 and 2011. On 22 November 2010, the German Minister of Defence proposed to the government to put conscription into abeyance on 1 July 2011. The constitution, however, retains provisions that would legalize the potential reintroduction of conscription.
Compulsory military training (CMT), a form of conscription, was practised for males in New Zealand between 1909 and 1972. Military training in New Zealand has been voluntary before then and ever since.
Archibald McColl Learmond Baxter was a New Zealand socialist, pacifist and conscientious objector.
The End Conscription Campaign was an anti-apartheid organisation allied to the United Democratic Front and composed of conscientious objectors and their supporters in South Africa. It was formed in 1983 to oppose the conscription of all white South African men into military service in the South African Defence Force.
William "Bill" White was a Sydney school teacher during the Vietnam War. In July 1966, White defied a notice to report for duty at an army induction centre. White was the first Australian to be a public conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. Both this initial application for total exemption and subsequent appeals were rejected. White was removed from his classroom and ordered to report to Army quarters at Watsons Bay. He refused to comply and waited at home for the authorities to make the next move.
The Conscientious Objector Support Group (COSG), a support group to conscientious objectors (COs) in South Africa, was formed in 1978. The organisation grew in the context of South African resistance to war, at the time of Apartheid. COs at the time included those who openly refused to report to the Military, once conscripted, those who were sometimes referred to as draft dodgers, and in due course those who were doing statutory community service.
In the United Kingdom, military conscription has existed for two periods in modern times. The first was from 1916 to 1920, and the second from 1939 to 1960. The last conscripted soldiers left the service in 1963.
Stephen Spiro (1939–2007) was a political activist known for his opposition against the Vietnam War and his advocacy of an ideology that opposes abortion, capital punishment, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. Opposing the Vietnam war based on the theory of Just War, he objected to being conscripted, but as the law only allowed for conscientious objection to all wars, he was convicted of avoiding conscription and given a suspended sentence of five years. He was later pardoned by President Gerald Ford.
Mario Benjamin Menéndez was the Argentine governor of the Falklands during the 1982 Argentine occupation of the islands. He also served in the Argentine Army. Menéndez surrendered Argentine forces to Britain during the Falklands War.
The Richmond Sixteen were a group of "absolutist" British conscientious objectors during the First World War. Conscripted into the British Army in 1916, they refused to undertake even non-combatant military duties. Brought together at Richmond Castle, Yorkshire, most not knowing each other previously, they were transported to France, where they were court-martialled and formally sentenced to be executed by firing squad, but this sentence was immediately commuted to ten years' penal servitude. They were released in April 1919, several months after the Armistice of 11 November 1918 and a few weeks before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
Joseph and Michael Hofer were brothers who died from mistreatment at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth in 1918. The pair, who were Hutterites from South Dakota, were among four conscientious objectors from their Christian colony who had been court-martialed and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment for refusing to be drafted in to the United States Army during World War I. After initially being sent to Fort Alcatraz for refusal to comply with military orders and discipline, Joseph and Michael were transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where they both died within two weeks of their arrival. Their bodies were returned to their families in military uniforms that they had refused to wear.
The Non-Combatant Corps (NCC) was a corps of the British Army composed of conscientious objectors as privates, with NCOs and officers seconded from other corps or regiments. Its members fulfilled various non-combatant roles in the army during the First World War, the Second World War and the period of conscription after the Second World War.
The Insubordinate movement was a mass antimilitarist movement of civil disobedience to compulsory military service in Spain, the movement lasting from the early 1970s until the abolition of conscription on 31 December 2001.
The Pacific Counseling Service (PCS) was a GI counseling service organization created by antiwar activists during the Vietnam War. PCS saw itself as trying to make the U.S. Armed Forces "adhere more closely to regulations concerning conscientious objector discharges and G.I. rights." The Armed Forces Journal, on the other hand, said PCS was involved in "antimilitary activities", including "legal help and incitement to dissident GIs." PCS evolved out of a small GI Help office started by a freshly discharged Air Force Sergeant in San Francisco, California in January 1969. The idea rapidly caught on among antiwar forces and within a year PCS had offices in Monterey, Oakland and San Diego in California, plus Tacoma, Washington. By 1971 it had spread around the Pacific with additional offices in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Okinawa, the Philippines, as well as Tokyo and Iwakuni in Japan. Each location was established near a major U.S. military base. At its peak, PCS was counseling hundreds of disgruntled soldiers a week, helping many with legal advice, conscientious objector discharges and more. As the war wound down, ending in 1975, the offices closed with the remaining office in San Francisco printing its last underground newspaper in 1976.
The Fort Lewis Six were six U.S. Army enlisted men at the Fort Lewis Army base in the Seattle and Tacoma, Washington area who in June 1970 refused orders to the Vietnam War and were then courts-martialed. They had all applied for conscientious objector status and been turned down by the Pentagon. The Army then ordered them to report for assignment to Vietnam, which they all refused. The Army responded by charging them with "willful disobedience" which carried a maximum penalty of five years at hard labor. The six soldiers were Private First Class Manuel Perez, a Cuban refugee; Private First Class Paul A. Forest, a British citizen from Liverpool; Specialist 4 Carl M. Dix Jr. from Baltimore; Private James B. Allen from Goldsboro, North Carolina; Private First Class Lawrence Galgano from Brooklyn, New York; and Private First Class Jeffrey C. Griffith from Vaughn, Washington. According to the local GI underground newspaper at Fort Lewis, this was the largest mass refusal of direct orders to Vietnam at the base up to that point in the war. Their refusal and subsequent treatment by the Army received national press coverage.
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