Die Hard, Aby!: Abraham Bevistein - The Boy Soldier Shot to Encourage the Others

212 Pages·2005·2.01 MB·English

by  David Lister

First published in Great Britain in 2005 by
Pen & Sword Military
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright © David Lister, 2005
9781783033669

The right of David Lister as Author of this Work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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To the memory of A.B.
and
for Betty and Ralph Jacobs
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Within the Pale
Chapter 2 - Exodus
Chapter 3 - Haven?
Chapter 4 - A Family Affair
Chapter 5 - To the Colours!
Chapter 6 - Men for Flags
Chapter 7 - Somewhere in France
Chapter 8 - From Ploegsteert Wood to Loos
Chapter 9 - Wounds for Christmas
Chapter 10 - Respite and Flight
Chapter 11 - Court Martial
Chapter 12 - Execution
Chapter 13 - Questions in the House
Chapter 14 - A Sacrifice Less Worthy?
Chapter 15 - No Time Limit on Justice
Epilogue
Appendix I - Final Parade at Labourse
Appendix II - Goodbye, the Old Battalion
Sources and Bibliography
Index
Preface
It is almost as if the case of the First World War British and Commonwealth
soldiers who were shot at dawn is a recurring, national itch that requires
scratching at frequent intervals. Possibly a nagging feeling by some that justice
has not been done, that feeling striking at the heart of a people who like to see
fair play. 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 in the subject bubbled away under the surface from
a time well before the cessation of hostilities in 1919.
Drawing on questions in the House, the rumours and accusations and other
sources that alluded to the soldiers, who were to the consternation of successive
governments proving to be the unquiet dead who would not be silenced, The
Thin Yellow Line was published in 1974. Its author, William Moore, had to make
as good a job of it as possible without recourse to official court martial papers,
for these had been closed to the public, and marked ‘not for release’ until the
expiration of one hundred years.
Ten years 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
within the public domain. Seventy-five years after the executions, the
government relenting to public pressure, the War Office documents were
released earlier than first intended, thus enabling more research. At this time,
another work, Shot at Dawn by Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes was
published. This was the first book to report on a detailed study of the individual
cases, and also the first where those executed were named within the body of the
work as opposed to within a table or index.
All these books lean towards the injustice of the situation, with the latter
making a strong case for the pardoning of all those executed for disciplinary
offences, such as desertion or sleeping at post. One of the most recent works on
the subject was published in 2001 and is the well researched but unusually
unsympathetic Blindfold and Alone by Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson.
This book takes the general stance that the executions were, for the most part,
properly carried out and probably necessary.
For God’s Sake Shoot Straight (recently published under the new title Death
for Desertion) by Leonard Sellers tells the story of Sub Lieutenant Edwin Dyett,
one of only two officers shot for military offences during the First World War.
It is suggested that Die Hard, Aby! follows a logical sequence, trailing in the
wake of the above mentioned publications. William Moore brought the issue of
the executions to the wider public for the first time. Anthony Babington
examined the case in more depth. The two Julians gave us details, linked names
to stories and raised a strong call for pardons. Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-
Wilson presented a detailed pro-establishment account, and Leonard Sellers’
book is the story of an executed officer. Die Hard, Aby! similarly seeks to
examine the story of the enlisted men and in particular Abraham Bevistein, who
like an estimated 15 per cent of all fighting men within the New Army, had
signed up as a soldier, under age.
This work seeks to tell his whole story. Where was he born? Where did he
grow up? What influences were at work during his short life, 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 leave not even a footnote on the pages of history. A name on a stone
or a memorial panel – but no more than that. This work will tell of little twists of
fate that caused Abraham’s name to become more than an anonymous line in a
Role of Honour. It will record how he has been mentioned in Hansard on
occasions spanning in excess of seventy years and how his story exemplifies an
injustice that has been allowed to endure for far too long.
This story is not that of the 306 men executed for military offences; it is that
of one boy who suffered that end, of Abraham Bevistein, who served under the
name ‘Harris’ and whose gravestone bears the name spelt incorrectly as
‘Beverstein’. The author fully acknowledges he is not immune to bias, but states
that he will make all conscious efforts to avoid personal views from taking
control of the processes of recording Abraham’s footnote in history.
Much of the work speaks of Abraham’s times and the setting for his life,
especially in the early chapters. After 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. That does not mean to say there is nothing at all, and such as is
available serves well to root him in time and location. We follow Abraham from
the Russian annexed land of his birth, across Europe and the North Sea and into