LIEUTENANT EDWIN LEOPOLD ARTHUR DYETT
ROYAL NAVAL DIVISION
5TH JANUARY 1917 AGE 21
BURIED: LE CROTOY COMMUNAL CEMETERY, FRANCE
Three British officers were executed in the course of the First World War and one of them was Edwin Dyett: Dyett and 2nd Lieutenant Poole were executed for desertion, 2nd Lieutenant Paterson for murder. Paterson was in fact arrested for desertion, four months after he had disappeared, but in attempting to escape arrest he shot and killed the arresting sergeant so the charge was murder. Of the three, Dyett's is the best documented case, and the least clear cut, seemingly based more on opinion than evidence.
On 19 December 1916 Dyett was charged on two counts:
"The accused, Temporary Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Leopold Arthur Dyett RNVR, an officer of the Nelson Battalion 63rd Division, is charged when on active service with deserting His Majesty's Service ... In the field on 13th November 1916, when it was his duty to join his battalion, which was engaged in operations against the Enemy, [he] did not do so, and remained absent from his battalion until placed under arrest at Englebelmer on 15th November 1916.
There was a second charge of "conduct to the prejudice of good order and Military discipline", which stated that Dyett "in the field on 13th November 1916 did not go up to the front line when it was his duty to do so".
The trial was heard on Boxing Day, 26 December. Dyett pleaded not guilty to both charges but did not give evidence nor were any witnesses called for the defence. The Court found him guilty of the first charge and not guilty of the second and sentenced him to death, before recommending leniency:
"He is very young and has no experience of active operations of this nature. And that the circumstances of growing darkness, heavy shelling and the fact that men were retiring in considerable numbers were likely to affect seriously a youth, unless he had a strong character."
The sentence was passed up the chain of command and on 28 December Major General C.D. Shute, Commander 63rd (RN) Division, wrote:
"The Division did very well on the Ancre and behaved most gallantly. Added to this Sub Lieutenant Dyett is very young and inexperienced. Beyond the above I know of no reason why the extreme penalty should not be exacted. I recommend mercy."
However, the next link in the chain, Lieutenant General Macob, Commander V Corps, decided on 30 December:
"I see no reason why the sentence should not be carried out."
And on 31 December at the next level the Commander of the Fifth Army, General Gough, wrote:
"I recommend that the sentence be carried out. If a private had behaved as he did in such circumstances, it is highly probable that he would be shot."
Then finally, on the 2 January 1917, the sentence reached the very top where Field Marshal Douglas Haig confirmed it - "condemned". Dyett was executed at dawn, 7.30 am, three days later, 5 January 1917.
On 4 January he wrote to his mother:
Dearest Mother Mine,
I hope by now you will have heard the news. Dearest, I am leaving you now because He has willed it. My sorrow tonight is for the trouble I have caused you and Dad ... I feel for you so much and I am sorry for bringing dishonour upon you all ... So now dearest Mother, I must close. May God bless and protect you all now and for evermore. Amen.
It was Dyett's mother, May Constance Dyett, who chose his inscription - his father was by then dead. She puts the words specifically in quotation marks and identifies the biblical passage from which they come - yet these are not the words of the passage, which read:
"For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God."
1 Peter 2.20
If you suffer having done something well (or perhaps in this case having not done something wrong) and you accept it patiently, God will admire your behaviour. Perhaps He will see it as the ultimate in turning the other cheek. I wonder whether the quotation marks indicate that Mrs Dyett was quoting from somewhere other than the bible - perhaps from the letter the Chaplain, who spent the last night with Dyett in his cell, wrote to her. The Dyetts did not believe their son was guilty and before he died Edwin's father, Commander Walter Dyett, RN, led an unsuccessful campaign through the pages of the magazine John Bull to have his son pardoned.
A good account of Dyett's case, which I have found very useful, can be found in Shot at Dawn: the Fifteen Welshmen executed by the British Army in the First World War by Robert King.