Death or Deliverance: Canadian Courts Martial in the Great War by Teresa Iacobelli (review)

Much of the popular sentiment regarding Canada’s twenty-five executions by firing squad during the First World War is based on modernday sentiments and sympathies. Teresa Iacobelli has determined to explore military justice with an “objective and thoroughly researched account of the facts” (15). In Death or Deliverance, she has achieved her goal and challenges previously accepted notions that Canadian military justice was harsh and inflexible during the Great War. Basing analysis on military law, trial procedures, and civil values as they existed from 1914 to 1918, and not upon current societal leanings is, Iacobelli believes, the “only way to do justice to military justice” (10). Execution for desertion, cowardice, or violent crime was deemed perfectly acceptable during the First World War, and was reflective of both military and civilian thought in Great Britain and throughout the Empire. The Canadian Army’s executions of twenty-two men for desertion, one for cowardice, and two for murder were, according to Iacobelli, handled swiftly but fairly. While these twenty-five soldiers were “shot at dawn,” another 178 of the condemned saw their death sentence for desertion commuted to lengthy prison terms, which came to an end with military discharge in 1919.

Given that so much Canadian societal and military thought during the Great War was driven by our connection to Great Britain, Iacobelli has geared much of her research toward an examination of Canada’s use of execution in relation to British disciplinary policy as analyzed by Gerard Oram in Military Executions during World War I (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Central to Oram’s work is his contention that the “ten per cent rate” of confirmation was a planned policy. With Canada’s rate of twenty-five executions out of 203 death sentences, Iacobelli finds a great deal in her Canadian research that corresponds with Oram’s research. A key component of both historians’ findings is the assertion that the death penalty was enforced for disciplinary and deterrent purposes, and that these considerations weighed far more heavily in the military court martial than did any concern for individual justice. Iacobelli notes that the ten per cent rate provided a “managed response to discipline” that allowed the Canadian Army to use executions in a “balanced yet useful” proportion that was politically acceptable on the home front and among the troops (71). In all, Death or Deliverance presents the Canadian court martial protocol as having exhibited “a level of fairness that in many ways was ahead of its time” (30).

When it comes to sources, Iacobelli explains that many of the records pertaining to the twenty-five executed men were, for unknown reasons, destroyed by the Directorate of History. Not to worry, however, for Iacobelli contends that research into those who received commuted death sentences “provides much more insight than twenty-five executions ever could” (137). In researching the archival records of those who received commuted death sentences, Iacobelli has found a wealth of information on the court martial process and statistical evidence of military discipline. Files of the men with commuted sentences contain trial transcripts, service records, and the all-important letters of recommendation, which formed an essential part of the confirmation process and the final step in determining execution or reprieve. These 352 letters, written by brigade, divisional, and battalion commanders, functioned as the most essential influence upon the commander-in-chief’s final ruling. Indeed, for Iacobelli, the extreme importance placed upon battalion commanders’ letters “prove[s] the fluidity of the military disciplinary system on the whole” and “disputes myths of an authoritative and oppressive military regime in which power was concentrated solely at the top” (92).

Iacobelli’s analysis of decisions to enforce or commute the death penalty illustrates the tremendous impact that circumstance had on a commander’s recommendations. “The state of discipline in the battalion and the timing of an offence dictated who would be executed more than any other factors” (140). Of the twenty-three executed for...