On Remembrance Day as we pause to remember and honour those in the armed forces who died in the line of duty, I wanted to reflect on those unfortunate men who were driven to extreme measures by the sheer torment of life in the trenches. These men were not ‘cowards’, far from it. Most had not only reached the limits of their endurance, but had gone far beyond them.
It was a serious concern to the British Army that soldiers might use self-inflicted wounds to escape the trenches, at least for a time. As a result, any man suspected of such an action was liable to be placed in front of a firing squad. The Army was right to be worried for instances of self-inflicted wounding seem to have been high. A total of 3,894 men were convicted of the offence and, though none were actually shot, all received draconian prison terms. And these were probably just the tip of the iceberg. For every man convicted of the offence, it seems likely that many others escaped punishment, their wound being reported as the accidental discharge of a firearm or even a combat injury.
For some men, however, either the threat of the firing squad or, more likely, the scorn of their peers, made even this extreme measure insufficient. Instead, these men deliberately killed themselves, either through a self-inflicted wound or simply by presenting themselves as a target to an enemy sniper. Such deaths were almost always simply covered up - there were certainly enough genuine fatalities through enemy action to make this easy – or, where this was not possible, the dead soldiers were dismissed as being ‘deranged’.
Thomas Cranston Davison was born and raised in Newcastle. In 1908 he married Margaret Jane Cruddas in the town. At the time of the 1911 Census, he was a 32-year-old Bricklayer’s Labourer with a baby son and an 11-year-old step-daughter at home.
Following the outbreak of War in August,1914, Thomas enlisted in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers as Private No. 22846. Following basic training, he was sent to France in December,1915, where he joined the 11th (Service) Battalion as a casualty replacement.
Over the next 2-years, the Battalion took part in some of the worst battles of the War as part of the 36th (Ulster) Division. These included the First Day on the Somme (1 July, 1916), the bloodiest day’s fighting in the history of the British Army, and the Third Battle of Ypres, which is more commonly known as Passchendaele (July-November,1917). Such were the scale of its losses that in January,1918 the Battalion was disbanded and its men largely used to bring the 9th (Service) Battalion up to strength. In Thomas’ case, he was transferred to ‘E’ Company of the 12th (Service) Battalion which was based in Ireland.
On 25 March,1918, while he was at home on leave, Thomas was rushed to the Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI) in Newcastle suffering from a gunshot wound. He died in the Hospital later that night.
The Coroner’s Report, released next day, recorded:
"Deceased died [at 7.50pm] from the effects of a bullet wound in the chest from a rifle, at his residence [at 20 Seaham Street] about 9.30am on Monday 25th March 1918. But whether the rifle was fired by accident or design there was no evidence before the Jury to show." [Royal Victoria Infirmary Coroner's Report No.136]
The Report was suitably non-committal, probably in the knowledge that had Thomas shot himself then his widow, Margaret Jane, would not have been entitled to a War Pension; which she subsequently received.
Despite receiving his full allocation of Service Medals, however, Thomas’ entry on the Medal Roll for the 1914-15 Star was not so charitable:
One feature of this tragedy that was unusual was that Thomas shot himself in the chest. It seems that almost all the men who followed this method of suicide did so by the more certain shot to the head. This was not an easy manoeuvre, the men having to pull the trigger with their toes due to the length of their rifles.
Thomas was buried at St. John's (Westgate and Elswick) Cemetery in Newcastle.