Pte George Hanna

George Hanna, who lived with his family in Belfast, was one of the so-called ‘Kitchener volunteers’ who enlisted on 8 September 1914 and joined the newly embodied 6 Bn. Royal Irish Fusiliers at Armagh.[1] The battalion, attached to 31 Brigade,10 (Irish) Division, was initially dispatched to Dublin but it was not long before it crossed the Irish Sea, and April 1915 found the formation stationed at Basingstoke, in Hampshire.

On 14 July 1915, the 6 Bn. Royal Irish Fusiliers embarked on s.s. Canada at Devonport Docks, and departed the following day, en route to Gallipoli, where 10 Division was destined to take part in the ill-fated landings at Suvla Bay. On 7 August, the battalion disembarked under heavy shellfire from Turkish batteries and was immediately involved in a couple of attacks against the enemy. By 9August, the battalion’s casualty returns (all ranks) were reported to be 29 killed in action and 309 Wounded and Missing.[2] The latter evidently included Pte. Hanna, who was reported to have gone absent without leave. How long he remained absent remains unknown but at the end of September, after the remnants of the battalion had been evacuated from Gallipoli to the Island of Lemnos, he was eventually charged with desertion. On 4 October, Hanna was tried by Field General Court Martial and sentenced to death.[3] However, Col. Sir Bryan Mahon, the officer commanding 10 Division, commuted the death sentence to ten years’ Penal Servitude, which he then suspended. A few days later, Hanna and the remainder of his battalion were shipped away to Salonika.

During the following year, conditions in Salonika and later in Macedonia proved very trying for the British Forces. The troops suffered as much from the negative effects of dismal military command, inept planning and organization as they did from the persistently inclement weather and mosquitoes. Nevertheless, Hanna’s conduct during the campaign evidently matched the dogged fortitude exemplified by the Irish rank and file of 10 Division, for on 29 September 1916, ‘For consistent good conduct and good work,’ the remainder of his sentence was remitted by the officer commanding 31 Brigade.[4] Shortly afterwards, the decimated ranks of the brigade were reorganized, and on 2 November, the 6 Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers ceased to exist and their ranks were mostly absorbed into 5 Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers.[5] However some of the troops that had been serving with 6 Battalion since the beginning of the war were sent to join the newly arrived 2 Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers. The 2 Battalion was one of a trio of Irish battalions whose ranks had been thinned by hard fighting with 27 Division on the Western Front. The new arrivals were mostly regular soldiers, including reservists who had been serving in India before the war and who had not enjoyed any home leave before being mobilised for service on the Western Front, so the posting to Salonika, a more distant theatre of operations, provoked grumbling in the ranks.[6] Whether Hanna also felt aggrieved, possibly at being drafted into an unhappy regular army formation remains open to speculation but on 26 November he again went absent without leave. He appeared in front of a Field General Court Martial on 13 December, was found guilty of attempting to desert, and was again sentenced to death. On 4 January 1916, the conviction was confirmed but the death sentence was commuted to 7 years’ Penal Servitude by Lieutenant H.F.M. Wilson, the Officer Commanding Salonica Forces.[7] Hanna remained in Salonika for a further three months before being shipped to the United Kingdom and was imprisoned in Maidstone Jail until 15 August, when his sentence was suspended by the War Office.[8] On being released from prison, he was immediately despatched to the 3 Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers’ Depot at Clonmany, County Londonderry. There was a chance that George might have been granted a brief spell of home leave but instead he was swiftly shipped overseas to France as a reinforcement for 1 Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers.

While he was stationed at Le Havre, waiting to be sent to the battalion, Hanna went out to enjoy a night on the town. At 7.30 a.m. 29 August, he left camp without a pass, and after being stopped for ‘being improperly dressed’, he was arrested by the Military Police at Rouelles, on the outskirts of Le Havre. On 1 September, for ‘breaking out of camp’ and having been absent absence without leave for 7 ¼ hours, Hanna was ordered to forfeit a day’s pay and to undergo two weeks’ Field Punishment No.1.[9] Hanna was one of a draft of seven reinforcements that were escorted to Amiens, on the Somme, to join 1 Battalion on 28 September. Shortly before 1.00 p.m. they reported for duty at the transport lines at Metz-en-Couture, a tiny hamlet situated roughly 16 kilometres East of Baupame, immediately behind the British front line. The newly arrived soldiers were told by an NCO that they were to go into the trenches at 6.30 p.m. but when the time came for them to set off, Hanna was nowhere to be found.[10] Hanna remained missing for three days but six weeks were to elapse before he was called to account for his absence.

On 15 October, Hanna was charged with desertion and faced trial by Field General Court Martial. Although he was on trial for his life, as with the vast majority of around 200 cases in which rank and file defendants had tried by British Army courts martial, condemned to death and subsequently executed, Hanna was unassisted in presenting his defence. Field General Courts Martial found 89% of rank and file defendants who had been charged with non-capital as well as capital offences, and were highly likely to sanction the execution of recidivists who had already been found guilty of a capital offence. So, even before the proceedings opened, all concerned must have known that Hanna’s chances of escaping the death sentence on a third occasion were pretty well nil.

The agents who sealed Hanna’s fate consisted of three officers: the President of the Field General Court Martial, Major E.R. May, 10 Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles, assisted by two Members: Captain W.H. Crotty, 1 Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers and Captain J. Findlay, 13 Battalion Royal Irish Rifles. Also in attendance, to ensure legal niceties were observed, was a Courts Martial Officer, Captain G. F. Carter.[11] The first witness for the prosecution, Quartermaster Sergeant F. Crossley detailed the fashion in which Hanna’s absence ended: ‘At about 8.40 p.m. on 1^st October 1917 I was standing at the railway terminus St. Acheul, Amiens. The accused came up to me and asked me for some food. I asked him why he wanted food at that hour of the night. I then took him to the cookhouse to give him some food. He complained that he was hungry. I asked him if he were on pass and had missed his train. He said ‘No.’ I asked him where he came from. He replied ‘Rocquigney’ I then took his name which he gave as Pte. Hanna, G. No. 4373. I placed the accused in the guardroom under close arrest and informed my commanding officer. Later on I handed the accused over to the military police in Amiens. It was then about 10.00 p.m.. When I first saw the accused he was properly dressed but seemed weary; he was wearing a belt but no equipment.’[12] Two witnesses, and NCO and a Private from the 1 Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers also gave testimony on behalf of the prosecution. They told the court the date, time and place when Hanna had gone absent and the former, (CQMS J. McLaughlin) testified “The battalion was in the trenches“ at the time Hanna had disappeared. Although this appears to be endorsed in the written proceedings by an unsigned note in the margin, referring to a location, “S.[outh] of Havrincourt Wood”, the Battalion War Diary quite clearly indicates that the formation was in fact between Mericourt-l’Abbe and Daours, near Corbie, behind the lines and more than thirty kilometres South East of Metz. Nor was it “in the trenches” until 9 October, two days after the arrested absentee had been escorted back from Amiens and rejoined the battalion.[13] Although Captain Crotty must have known that McLaughlin’s recollection was at fault, the NCO was not cross-examined by the court and the error went unchallenged. In the event, it may have made little difference to the outcome of Hanna’s trial but the detection by the Judge Advocate General of similar faults in other trials would have been enough to call the proceedings and verdict into question. Hanna’s evidence was given under oath, and much of what he had to say was in response to cross-examination by the court.[14] In his own defence, he declared: “I had absolutely no intention of deserting. If I had not been detained I should have returned to camp. I have been three years on service; two of my brothers have been killed in France, and one at sea. I was refused leave to go and see my people. My last leave was in December 1914.”[15] In response to questioning by the prosecuting officer, he stated: “I absented myself because I was upset at not being able to get leave, and I had heard from my sister to say that she had been expecting me home, and when I did not come, it upset her and she was not well.”

Cross-examined by the Court, Hanna added: “I walked all the way from Metz to Amiens. I got no food on the way. I slept in the open. I only reached Amiens on the day that I spoke to QMS Crossley. I had been in France about 6 weeks on 28^th September. I came up from Le Havre. I had previously been in England. My home is in Belfast. I wanted leave to go to Belfast, I applied for leave when I was at Clonmany in Ireland; that was about seven weeks before I left Metz on 28^th September. I had been on service at the Dardanelles from 7^th August 1915 to 29^th September 1915; I then went to Salonica and was there until April 1917; I was with the 6^th and 2^nd Battalions R.I.F.”[16]

Hanna’s motives appear to have been straightforward enough but neither defendant’s declarations of love for their family or reference to sibling sacrifice in cause of King and Empire moved Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. Had it been otherwise, there is little doubt that many condemned men would not have been executed and had Hanna been an officer, his conduct might have cost him his commission or merely a reprimand. Had Sir Douglas Haig felt in a good mood on 2 November 1917, when he was presented with the written proceedings, Hanna’s life may have been spared. On the other hand, having already squandered the lives of tens of thousands of troops in fruitless attacks against the Germans during the summer and autumn of 1916, it would have been truly miraculous if Haig had paused for a moment before scribbling his assent to the execution of Pte. Hanna.

The War Diary of 1 Bn. Royal Irish Fusiliers was a less than generous in representing the full duration of George Hanna’s war service. It noted: ‘The death sentence on No.12609, Private G. Hanna was promulgated at Barrosa Hall, Metz [-en-Couture] by Captain and Adjutant W. Scott, MC. This was the first death sentence ordered to be carried out in this Battn. since its arrival in France. Private Hanna was only about five hours with the Battn. he having joined with a draft, but when warned for the trenches, disappeared.”[17] At daybreak on 6 November, 26-year old Pte. Hanna was killed by a firing squad under the command of Lieutenant George Reeve MC, MM 1Bn. Royal Irish Fusiliers.[18]

[1] From CWGC data, it appears that the family may have originated from Guildford, Co. Armagh, where at least one of their children was born circa 1886.

[2] 6 Bn. Royal Irish Fusiliers, War Diary, 31.7.15: Strength: 27 officers, 756 other ranks; 22.8.15: Strength: 5 officers, 388 other ranks. See also B. Cooper (1993 edn.) The Tenth Irish Division in Gallipoli (Dublin, Irish Academic Press), ch. 10.

[3] WO71/611 JAG: FGCM: Hanna, Army Form AFB 122.

[4] Ibid. The order was signed by Brigadier-General E.M. Morris, the Officer Commanding 31 Brigade.

[5] Heavy casualties, due to combat and sickness plus a sharp decline in voluntary enlistments in Ireland compelled the British Army to disband or amalgamate depleted Irish battalions.

[6] R. Skilbeck Smith (1930) A Subaltern in Macedonia and Palestine (London, Mitre), cited in T. Johnstone (1992) Orange, Green and Khaki (London, Gill & Macmillan), pp. 265-266.

[7] WO71/611, op. cit., Army Form AFB 122, op. cit..

[8] Ibid., Army Form W3104, dated 5.10.17 notes with reference to ‘No.12609 Pte. W. Hanna, 2nd Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers’, that his suspended sentence was scheduled for review on 15.11.17.

[9] This was a summary punishment, sometimes known as ‘crucifixion’, awarded by the Reinforcement Camp Commandant, Lt. Col. Arthur St. Leger Glyn, Grenadier Guards (Reserve).

[10] WO71/611, op. cit., Prosecution Witness Statements: CQMS J. McLaughlin; Pte. R. Cowan, 1 Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers.

[11] Gerald Francis Carter, B.A. (Oxon.), 10.8.1914, Lt. (QM) RAMC; T/Capt., Special List [C-M Officer] 19.1.1917; T/Major / DAAG, 6.10.18; OBE. It was quite common, and legally acceptable, even in capital cases for FGCM members or even the President to be drawn from the defendants’ battalion.

[12] WO71/611, op. cit., Prosecution Witness Statements: 5382 SQMS F. Crossley, Group E, Control Purchase Board; P/5705 L/Cpl. A. McGregor, Military Foot Police.

[13] WO71/611, op. cit., Prosecution Witness Statements: CQMS J. McLaughlin; Pte. R. Cowan, 1 Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers; WO95/2502 War Diary: 1 Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers 25.9.17; 30.9.17; 9.10.17.

[14] FGCM written proceedings rarely reproduce verbatim, if at all, questions raised during cross-examination. As a consequence it is impossible to know whether defendants incriminated themselves because of Prosecuting Officers use of leading questions.

[15] One of the brothers to whom George refers: 3642 Pte. David Loftus Hanna, 1 Bn. Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. (aged 32), 1 Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers, died of wounds on 9.8.16 at Lijssenthoek in the Ypres Salient

[16] WO71/611, op. cit., Defence Statement: 12609 Pte. G. Hanna.

[17] WO 95/2502 War Diary: 1 Bn. Royal Irish Fusiliers, 5.11.1917

[18] George Hanna is buried nearby in Neuville-Bourjonval British Cemetery (Grave: E16); Lt. Reeve died in his home town, Northampton on 14.10.1918 and is buried in Towcester Road Cemetery. WO 17/611, op. cit, Death Certificate (signed by Capt. H.W. Montgomery, Assistant Provost Marshal, 36 Division).