Reenactment of a firing squad executing a British soldier.
Today 107 years ago, on September 8, 1914, 19-year-old British Private Thomas Highgate was executed for desertion - the very first of 346 British soldiers sentenced to death and executed during the First World War.
Born in Shoreham near Kent, England on May 13, 1895, Thomas James Highgate was just 17-years-old when he enlisted into the 1st Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment of the British Army on February 14, 1913.
Aged 19 when the First World War broke out, Private Highgate was shipped to France with his battalion on August 15, 1914. Already a week later, Private Highgate participated in the Battle of Mons and the subsequent British withdrawal to the Marne river.
In the early hours of September 6, Private Highgate's battalion went forward and attacked in the First Battle of the Marne. His battalion suffered staggering losses in the attack, and it was at this point that the nerves got the better of the young soldier, who fled the scene.
Private Highgate found a small farmhouse near the village of Tournan-en-Brie, as well as some civilian clothes, which he put on before hiding in a barn.
He was eventually discovered by the estate's gamekeeper, who happened to be English. Private Highgate reportedly told the gamekeeper: "I have had enough of it, I have lost my army and want to get out of it, and this is how I am going to do it."
Private Highgate was turned in and immediately court-martialed on September 6. At his trial, Private Highgate was unrepresented and stated he couldn't remember much of what had happened. He was sentenced to death for desertion, with senior officers insisting that "he be executed at once, as publicly as possible".
At 7:07 AM on September 8, 1914, Private Thomas Highgate was executed at Tournan-en-Brie by firing squad of men from the Dorset Regiment and Cheshire Regiment. In order to use him as an example, news of his fate was published and distributed to the rest of the British Expeditionary Force.
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