Étaples mutiny

The Étaples mutiny was a series of mutinies in 1917, by British Empire soldiers in France during the First World War.

Background

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Edwin Summerhayes' painting of Le Touquet from the Bull Ring

Before the war, Étaples, 15 miles (24 km) south of Boulogne-sur-Mer, was a coastal fishing port with a fleet of trawlers. It also attracted artists from around the world.

After 1914, the town became one of a series of British Army bases that stretched along the Channel coast of France. Étaples did not impress British women who volunteered to work in YMCA huts at the base. In the words of Lady Olave Baden-Powell, "Étaples was a dirty, loathsome, smelly little town". On the other side of the river was the smart beach resort known officially as Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, and unofficially as either Le Touquet or Paris-Plage. Le Touquet was in effect officers' territory, and pickets were stationed on the bridge over the Canche to enforce the separation.

Étaples was a particularly notorious base camp for those on their way to the front. The officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) in charge of the training, the "canaries", also had a reputation of not having served at the front, which inevitably created a certain amount of tension and contempt. Under atrocious conditions, both raw recruits and battle-weary veterans were subjected to intensive training in gas warfare and bayonet drill, and long sessions of marching at the double across the dunes. After two weeks, many of the wounded would rather return to the front with unhealed wounds than remain at Étaples.

On 28 August 1916, a member of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), Private Alexander Little (10th Battalion; no. 3254), verbally abused a British NCO after water was cut off while he was having a shower. As he was being taken to the punishment compound, Little resisted and was assisted and released by other members of the AIF and the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF). Four of these men were later identified, court-martialled, convicted of mutiny and sentenced to death, including Little. Three had their sentence commuted. While the military regulations of the AIF prevented the imposition of capital punishment on its personnel, that was not the case for the NZEF. Private Jack Braithwaite, an Australian serving with the NZEF, in the 2nd Battalion of the Otago Regiment, was considered to be a repeat offender — his sentence was confirmed by General Douglas Haig and he was shot by a firing squad on 29 October.

The mutiny

It appears that relations between personnel and authorities at the camp continued to deteriorate. They came to a head on Sunday 9 September 1917, after the arrest of Gunner A. J. Healy, a New Zealander belonging to No. 27 Infantry Base Depot. He and others bypassed the police pickets patrolling the bridges that gave access to Le Touquet, which was out of bounds to enlisted men. His son recalled:

It was the practice for those who wished to visit the township to walk across the estuary or river mouth at low tide, do their thing and return accordingly. However in my father's case the tide came in, in the interval and to avoid being charged as a deserter, he returned across the bridge and was apprehended as a deserter by the "Red Caps" and placed in an adjoining cell or lock up. When news of this action reached the NZ garrison, the troops left in a mass and proceeded to the lock up.

A large crowd of angry men gathered near the "Pont des Trois Arches", heading towards town. They did not disperse, even when told the gunner had been released. It was clear that the protest over the arrest was only the tip of an iceberg and the atmosphere was tense. The arrival of military police only made matters worse and scuffles broke out. Suddenly the sound of shooting was heard. Private H. Reeve, a military policeman, had fired into the crowd, killing Corporal W. B. Wood of the 4th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders, and injuring a French woman standing in the Rue de Huguet, Étaples. Thereafter, the police simply fled.

News of the shooting spread quickly. By 7:30 pm over a thousand angry men were pursuing the military police, who fled in the direction of the town.

The following morning measures were taken to prevent further outbreaks and police pickets were stationed on the bridges leading into the town. Nevertheless, by 4 pm men had broken through the pickets and were holding meetings in the town, followed by sporadic demonstrations around the camp.

On Tuesday, fearing further outbreaks, the Base Commandant requested reinforcements. Meanwhile, the demonstrations gathered momentum.

On Wednesday 12 September, in spite of orders confining them to camp, over a thousand men broke out and marched through the town. Later that day, reinforcements of 400 officers and men of the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) arrived, armed with wooden staves. The HAC detachment was composed mainly of officers and was a unit on which complete reliance could be placed. The HAC were supported by a section from the Machine Gun Corps. The threat worked: only 300 men broke camp and were arrested at Étaples. The incident was now over and the reinforcements were dispersed.

Many men were charged with various military offences and Corporal Jesse Robert Short (his life now celebrated and remembered in a song by the English Anarchic punk folk band 'the Levellers' on album Static on the airwaves) of the Northumberland Fusiliers was condemned to death for attempted mutiny. He was found guilty of encouraging his men to put down their weapons and attack an officer, Captain E. F. Wilkinson of the West Yorkshire Regiment. Three other soldiers received 10 years' penal servitude. The sentences passed on the remainder involved 10 soldiers being jailed for up to a year's imprisonment with hard labour, 33 were sentenced to between seven and ninety days field punishment and others were fined or reduced in rank. Short was executed by firing squad on 4 October 1917 at Boulogne. He is buried in the Boulogne Eastern Cemetery.

In popular culture

Poet/soldier Wilfred Owen, resting at Étaples on his way to the line, described the context of the mutiny:

"I thought of the very strange look on all the faces in that camp; an incomprehensible look, which a man will never see in England; nor can it be seen in any battle but only in Etaples. It was not despair, or terror, it was more terrible than terror, for it was a blindfold look and without expression, like a dead rabbit's."

Siegfried Sassoon's poem "Base Details" expressed the contempt of infantry veterans for the officers and NCOs who staffed Étaples:

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. 'Poor young chap,'
I'd say—'I used to know his father well;
Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.'
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die—in bed.

An Australian war-artist, Iso Rae, visited the camp during the war and depicted it in paintings.

The English writer Vera Brittain served in the VAD at Étaples at the time of the mutiny; she describes the atmosphere of rumour and secrecy in her book Testament of Youth. Female personnel "were shut up in our hospitals to meditate on the effect of three years of war upon the splendid morale of our noble troops". Meanwhile, "numerous drunken and dilapidated warriors from the village battle were sent to spare beds..... for slight repairs." She says that it was mid-October before the mutiny ended. In a subsequent footnote she concludes that "the mutiny was due to repressive conditions......and was provoked by the military police".

William Allison and John Fairley's 1978 book The Monocled Mutineer gave a very imaginative account of the life and death of Percy Toplis and of his involvement in the mutiny. It prompted questions in Parliament about the events of the mutiny when it was first published, which led to the discovery that all the records of the Étaples Board of Enquiry had been destroyed long since. A BBC1 television series, also entitled The Monocled Mutineer, was adapted from the book, and caused some controversy at the time of its first transmission in 1986, being used by the press to attack the BBC for left-wing bias. Some advertising material issued to promote the series inadvisedly claimed that it was a "true-life story".

Official records show that Toplis' regiment was en route to India during the Étaples mutiny. No evidence exists to show that Toplis was absent from his regiment.

See also

• 1915 Singapore Mutiny
• French Army Mutinies (1917)