Category Archives: Military

Arts, Books, Britain, First World War, History, Military

Book Review: ‘Die Hard, Aby!’…

DIE HARD, ABY!

… For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe (William Shakespeare)

RECENT BOOKS, many by Pen and Sword such as Shot at Dawn, have highlighted the often shocking cases of young British soldiers in the Great War being executed by their own side. All too frequently their trials were cursory, the evidence flimsy and the defence wholly inadequate. Such scandals has appalled right-minded people of all political persuasions, not least as there is strong evidence that the authorities turned a blind-eye to under-age boys serving illegally on the Western Front.

Die Hard, Aby! is a book that examines in depth the shocking case of a Jewish boy, Abraham Bevistein who enlisted in the Middlesex Regiment at the age of seventeen. By all accounts an exemplary young soldier, Aby was wounded in action and hospitalised.

After what was probably a premature release, his battalion suffered a major bombardment and Aby reported sick. Declared fit for duty, he then made the fatal mistake of not returning immediately to the front-line. The authorities arrested and tried him. The conduct of that trial is examined in close detail and clearly flouts every convention of natural justice.

His execution by firing squad caused horror and utter disbelief to his family and those who knew him and readers who engage this masterly written book will, equally, feel outraged. Aby’s case featured, too, as a major part of the Channel 4 drama documentary Boy Soldiers of the First World War.

This superbly researched and, for many, highly emotive account of a specific case of grave injustice will likely fuel yet further the controversy over such executions. Die Hard, Aby! is sure to appeal to all who feel any sentiment for their fellow humans.

At the end of the book it will be for the reader to decide whether Abraham Bevistein has been afforded fair justice from the country for which he died – even after all these years.

FAIR JUSTICE?

Soldiers who were shot during the Great War have, at times, become an emotive and recurring, national argument and topic. As David Lister, the author of this compelling work ‘Die Hard, Aby!’ writes:

… It is a recurring, national itch that requires scratching at regular intervals.

There is possibly a nagging feeling by some that justice has not been done; others may just wish the subject would fade away, and pretty much feel that justice was done in the first place.

There are several books that address the issue but, even before the first of them had been conceived, interest on the subject has bubbled away under the surface from a time well before the cessation of hostilities in 1919.

The Thin Yellow Line was published in 1974. Its author, William Moore, drawing on questions raised in Hansard (House of Commons), had to make a good as a job of it as possible without recourse to official court-martial papers. Those had been closed to the public: marked ‘not for release’ until the expiration of 100-years.

A decade later, Anthony Babington’s For The Sake of Example was the first book published by an author who had been allowed to see the papers, still not yet, though, within the public domain.

75-years after the executions, the government relenting to public pressure, the war office documents were released earlier than first intended, enabling more research. At the time of the release, another publication Shot at Dawn (Julian Putkowski/Julian Sykes) had been made. This was the first book to report in detail of individual cases, as well as the first to record the names of those executed within the main-body of the text (as opposed to within a table or index).

All of these books lean towards the injustice of the situation, with the latter making a strong case for the ‘pardoning‘ of all those executed for military disciplinary offences, such as desertion or sleeping at post. Recently, though, works by Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson, produced there well-researched (but unsympathetic) publication entitled Blindfold and Alone. Here, the authors take the general stance that the executions were, for the most part, necessary and properly carried out.

For God’s Sake Shoot Straight (recently published as ‘Death for Desertion’) by Leonard Sellers tells the true story of Sub Lieutenant Edwin Dyett, one of only two officers shot for military offences during the First World War.

Die Hard, Aby! follows a logical sequence of events that trails in the wake of publications previously made available. Whilst Moore brought the issue of executions into the wider public domain and Babington examined the case in more depth, Die Hard, Aby! similarly seeks to examine the story of the enlisted men and in particular Abraham Bevistein, who like an estimated 15% of all fighting ‘men’, had signed-up as a soldier, under-age.

Lister sets out to tell the whole-story of Abraham Bevistein: where he was born, where he grew up and what, chain of events brought him to his fate. Abraham was a very ordinary boy amongst the hundreds of thousands of ordinary boys and men who died in the trenches and whose lives have not even left a footnote on the pages of history, other than a name merely scribed on a stone or a memorial panel.

Abraham has been recorded and mentioned in Hansard on occasions, now, spanning in excess of 75-years. His story exemplifies an injustice that has been allowed to endure for far too long.

David Lister’s book considers not that of the 306 men executed for military offences; but of one boy who suffered that end, Abraham Bevistein, who served under the name of “Harris” and whose gravestone even bears the name spelt incorrectly as ‘Beverstein’.

Much of Lister’s work speaks of Abraham’s times and the setting for his life. The writer acknowledges that with the passage of years, there is little to be found in records and archives of the life of one boy who grew-up in a poor part of London.

Abraham is followed from the Russian annexed land of his birth, across Europe and the North Sea and into a new land for which he chose to fight, and for which he ultimately died. A little is learnt of his school life, the regiment he joined and of the events that brought him to his untimely death.

The premise of Die hard, Aby! is a sad-case of an executed boy – taken up in Parliament – based on how letters from the front, scribbled on scraps of paper, were brought to the attention of the nation.

In a carefully choreographed story, based on real-life events, David Lister exposes brilliantly the injustice of Abraham’s untimely death by execution.

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China, Foreign Affairs, Government, Japan, Military, Russia, United States

Russian war games in a show of strength…

RUSSIA FLEXES ITS MILITARY MUSCLES

RUSSIA has just started the biggest military exercises since the Soviet era, involving 160,000 troops and about 5,000 tanks across Siberia and the far eastern region in a massive show of strength.

Throughout this week dozens of Russian Pacific Fleet ships and around 130 combat aircraft will take part in military manoeuvres. Part of those drills will be on Sakhalin Island in the Pacific, where thousands of troops have been ferried and airlifted from the mainland.

Russia’s deputy defence minister, Anatoly Antonov, has made clear and assured foreign military attachés that the exercises are not directed against any particular nation, though some military analysts believe the show of force is aimed at China and Japan.

A retired officer of the Russian military’s general staff, Konstantin Sivkov, gave an interview to the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta and briefed that the Sakhalin part of the manoeuvres are intended to simulate a response to a hypothetical attack by Japanese and US forces.

Russia and Japan are currently in dispute over a group of Pacific islands, which Russia calls the Kurils and Japan calls the Northern Territories.

Russia tanks move across Sakhalin Island during military exercises seen by many as a warning to China and Japan.

Russia tanks move across Sakhalin Island during military exercises seen by many as a warning to China and Japan.

Mr Antonov said that Russia had warned its neighbours about the exercise before it started, and provided particularly detailed information to China, in line with an agreement that envisages a mutual exchange of data about military activities along their 2,700-mile border.

The Cold War-era rivals have forged what they have described as a ‘strategic partnership’ since the 1991 Soviet Union collapse, developing close political, economic and military ties in a shared aspiration to counter US power around the world.

Russia has supplied sophisticated weapons to China, and the neighbours have conducted joint military drills, most recently a naval exercise in the Sea of Japan earlier this month.

But many in Russia have felt increasingly uneasy about the growing might of China.

Russia and China had territorial disputes for centuries. Relations between Communist China and the Soviet Union ruptured in the 1960s, and the two fought a brief border conflict in 1969. It wasn’t until 2004 that Moscow and Beijing signed a new border treaty, which saw Russia yielding control over several islands in the Amur River. Some in Russia’s sparsely populated far east feared that the concessions might tempt China’s resolve or by teasing its appetite.

Alexander Khramchikhin, an independent Moscow-based military analyst, said the massive exercise held in the areas along the border with China was clearly aimed at Beijing. He said: ‘It’s quite obvious that the land part of the exercise is directed at China, while sea and island part of it is aimed at Japan.’

Mr Khramchikhin, who recently posted an article online portraying a grim picture of Russia being routed in a surprise Chinese attack, said that the war games along their shared border was intended to discourage China from harbouring expansionist plots. In his article, Mr Khramchikhin wrote: ‘China may now think that Russia has finally become more aware of what could happen.’

The manoeuvres are part of recent efforts to boost the military’s mobility and combat readiness after years of post-Soviet decline, but they have far exceeded previous drills in both numbers and territorial scope.

As part of the war games, held across several time zones, some army units have been deployed to areas thousands of miles away from their bases. Paratroopers have been flown across Russia in long-range transport aircraft, and some units were ferried to Sakhalin under escort of navy ships and fighter jets.

A decade of post-Soviet economic meltdown has crippled Russia’s military capability, with a lack of funds for building and maintaining equipment, and mass draft-dodging of soldiers due to corruption and bullying.

The Kremlin responded to weaknesses revealed in a brief conflict with Georgia in 2008 by launching reforms intended to turn the bloated military into a more modern, agile and rapid reaction force.

The government has also unveiled an ambitious arms modernisation programme, though this has come under attack by a number of analysts describing the proposals as ‘clearly insufficient’.

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Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Military, National Security, Syria, United States

Arming the Syrian rebels is looking less likely…

SYRIAN REBELS

Downing Street has ditched plans to arm the Syrian rebels after the Prime Minister has been warned that there is little point sending weapons unless he is prepared for all-out war with the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

General Sir David Richards, Chief of the Defence Staff, along with other commanders believe that sending small arms or ground-to-air missiles will hardly be worth it, since it would it would make little difference to the outcome of the conflict. Military chiefs have also said that even options like a no-fly zone (NFZ) would require air attacks on Syrian defences that would last weeks or even months.

The assassination last week of Kamal Hamami, a top commander of the Syrian Free Army, by a hardline group linked to Al-Qaeda, has compounded anxieties over plans by Britain and other Western countries to give military help to rebels fighting the Assad regime. Those fears are aggravated by the possibility that weapons and expertise provided to the rebels could be turned against the UK and her allies by radical Islamists. There are also growing rivalries between the Syrian Free Army and Islamists, who have sometimes joined forces on the battlefield.

But senior ministers and Whitehall officials have revealed that the Coalition is drawing up plans to help train and advise ‘moderate’ elements of the opposition forces who continue to battle with Assad’s forces.

The British Prime Minister has been keen to act on Syria and demanded last month an end to the EU arms embargo on the country to give him options. The EU reluctantly relented, but sending weapons to the beleaguered rebels in Syria remains an option open to the prime minister if parliament was to approve, though that does seem a remote possibility at the present moment given the lack of support among Tory whips.

Following a meeting of the National Security Council, in which British military commanders were asked to present options on the conflict, the Government was told that although it might make them feel better (by sending weapons) it was hardly worth it in terms of altering the balance of forces on the ground. Whilst Syria is known to have good air defences, military chiefs have also said that engaging Syria militarily would mean weeks of bombing and air strikes. A decision to engage is one that couldn’t be undertaken half-heartedly.

But given the lack of organisation within the rebel movement, training and advising the rebels remain district possibilities for Britain. The UK is concentrating on areas where it feels it has the expertise to contribute. The supply of weapons into Syria is continuing to be made by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

It is understood that military advisers could be stationed in Jordon to advise Syria rebel leaders on strategy and tactics. UK chiefs are wary of being accused of having British boots on the ground in Syria or by making any ground incursion into the country.

Ministers believe it could take 18 months of further conflict before Assad is forced to the negotiating table. The civil war has already claimed more than 100,000 lives with millions more displaced on the borders with neighbouring countries.

There is also frustration about the approach taken by US Secretary of State John Kerry in pushing regime figures to the negotiating table. There is little idea of the solution Mr Kerry is seeking. Knowing where you are trying to get to in order to get there should surely be central in any negotiations over Syria, but this underpinning remains distinctly absent even after almost three years of intense fighting.

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