The sun had barely cleared the horizon east of Paris when the volley of rifle fire rang out, cutting down a 19-year-old private from Kent who had been fighting for his country for less than a month. Private Thomas James Highgate became the first British soldier executed by his own side in the First World War, a grim distinction that would ultimately be shared by 345 other men before the conflict ended.
The execution on the morning of September 8, 1914, was swift and deliberate. Highgate had been captured just two days earlier, hiding in a barn on a local estate wearing civilian clothes and without his rifle, telling a gamekeeper he had lost his regiment and wanted out of the war. His trial lasted a mere 20 minutes, with no meaningful defense presented on his behalf.
Born in the village of Shoreham in Kent in 1895, Highgate’s early life offered little comfort. His parents, John and Alice, struggled with poverty and eventually found themselves and their children in the Lewisham workhouse. At age 14, Thomas was sent to the Metropolitan Asylum Board’s training ship Exmouth in Essex, where up to 500 boys from workhouses and orphanages were prepared for careers at sea.
After completing his training, Highgate joined the passenger liner SS Oriana, working as a deck boy on routes between the UK and South America. His work record described him as a hard worker but prone to absenteeism, a pattern that would follow him into military service. In February 1913, at age 17, he enlisted in the British Army, joining the first battalion of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment.
Standing just 5 feet 4 and a half inches tall, with brown hair, hazel eyes, and naval tattoos on both forearms, Highgate was not destined to become a model soldier. Within his first year, he faced charges for being late to a military tattoo, exchanging duties without permission, and possessing a rusty rifle. On the anniversary of his enlistment, he went absent without leave from his battalion in Ireland, resurfacing nearly five weeks later in Kent.
Apprehended while attempting to fraudulently reinlist in the army at Woolage, Highgate received 48 days detention. His service record contained a memorandum from a Captain Tate, the medical officer at Richmond Barracks, noting that Highgate appeared to suffer from amnesia. This detail would prove crucial, yet it was never raised during his court-martial.
When Britain entered the war on August 4, 1914, Highgate’s battalion marched from Dublin to the docks and sailed for France on August 14. The West Kents landed at Le Havre and immediately moved toward the front as part of II Corps. By August 23, they were engaged in the Battle of Mons, where they shot advancing German grenadiers to pieces in the open and captured enemy artillery pieces.
Despite these heroics, the British Expeditionary Force was forced into a desperate retreat that lasted two weeks and covered 200 miles. By the end of August, the BEF reported nearly 3,000 stragglers, men separated from their units in the chaos of the withdrawal. Private Thomas Highgate was among them.
On September 6, 1914, the BEF held a line east of Paris, with II Corps centered around the village of Touquin. That morning, a British-born gamekeeper found Highgate in a barn, dressed in civilian clothes and without his rifle. The gamekeeper handed him to local police, who informed the British army.
Highgate told authorities he had lost his regiment and wanted out of the war. Whether genuine desertion or a manifestation of the amnesia noted in his medical record remains unknown. What is certain is that he was court-martialed that very afternoon, found guilty of desertion, and sentenced to death.
The amnesia memorandum was never referenced, nor did Highgate use it as a defense.
General Smith-Dorrien, commanding II Corps, was determined to make an example. With 3,000 stragglers out of an army of 90,000, he needed a deterrent. Highgate was singled out because, unlike most stragglers who eventually returned to their units, he had discarded his uniform and rifle, clear evidence of intent to desert.
News of his execution was read out to every battalion in the BEF. The men of the first Dorsets and first Cheshires were ordered to witness the firing squad on the morning of September 8, 1914, just one month and four days after Britain entered the war. The sun had risen about 90 minutes earlier; the day was bright and clear, the temperature already rising.
Facing a firing party drawn from the Bedfordshire Regiment, Private Thomas James Highgate was shot at 7:07 a. m. He was the first of 346 British soldiers executed during the First World War, of whom 309 were later pardoned in 2006.
Only 20 of those executed were teenagers, contrary to popular perception. The majority were in their 20s, with 46 men over 30.
The oldest man executed was 46-year-old Private Harry Hrix of the second battalion, the Leinster Regiment, a US citizen who had enlisted before America entered the war. He was executed for desertion on August 23, 1918, after multiple escapes from custody and a pattern of absconding that led his brigade commander to call him one of the worst characters in the army.
Popular history often bundles these men together as shot for cowardice, but only 11 were specifically charged with that offense. The vast majority, 266 in total, were shot for desertion. Seven committed the offense of quitting their post, six for striking a superior, five for disobedience, two for sleeping at their post, and two for casting away their guns.
Thirty-seven were convicted of murder.
The story of Second Lieutenant John Harry Patterson of the first Essex regiment illustrates the complexity of these cases. Patterson, who may have enlisted under a false name, deserted in March 1918, lived under a false identity, cashed forged checks, and shot a military policeman who confronted him. He was executed for murder on September 24, 1918.
Three men were executed for mutiny, including Corporal Jesse Short, a Welsh-born minor from the northeast town of Felling. Short was arrested for inciting guards to lay down their arms during the Etaples mutiny. Despite a previously good record, he alone was sentenced to death and executed on October 4, 1917, leaving a wife and two daughters.
The punishment for desertion had been on the statute books for over 200 years, with roots in medieval England. The army had historically recruited from the lowest rungs of society, and discipline rested on fear. But the First World War transformed the British army into a massive citizen force of students, bank clerks, managers, and engineers, yet the rule book remained stuck in the Victorian age.
Statistics reveal a more nuanced picture than heartless generals sending men to their deaths. During the war, there were over 200,000 courts-martial, resulting in 20,000 convictions for offenses carrying the death penalty. Of those, just 3,080 were actually sentenced to death, and only 346 were executed.
This was less than half the number executed by France and a third of the Italian figure.
The Germans officially executed just 48 men, having legally set higher standards of proof for desertion. The United States executed none, as President Wilson refused to sign death sentences. Australia passed a law expressly forbidding executions without government approval and refused to approve any, despite appeals from British generals.
At the end of the war, the names of executed men were excluded from most war memorials. But questions about whether shooting men for desertion or cowardice, especially those suffering from shell shock, was justified began to emerge. In 1930, parliament abolished the death penalty for everything except murder and mutiny, a change that would have spared 277 soldiers had it been in place before 1914.
The campaign to clear the names of those executed continued for decades. In 2006, all men except those convicted of murder were pardoned by the British Parliament. The Shot at Dawn statue at the National Memorial Arboretum commemorates these men, surrounded by 309 symbolic wooden stakes.
Among them stands Private Thomas James Highgate, the very first man executed on September 8, 1914, whose brief life ended before a firing squad in a field east of Paris.
