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World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment
Pte. Harry T. Farr
British Army 1st Btn. West Yorkshire Regiment
(d.18th Oct 1916)
Harry Farr was executed for cowardice 18/10/1916 age 25 and is commemorated on Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, Somme, France. His crime was "mis-behaving before the enemy in such a manner as to show cowardice". He simply refused to return to the trenches while suffering from "shell shock". After two years on the Western Front he was so badly affected that he spent five months in hospital. Despite this he was found guilty at the court-martial and executed in Northern France. Private Farr's widow, Gertie Batstone was informed of his death but learnt only later of the manner of it. Soon after, her war pension was stopped.
Gracie Harris, who was three years old when her father, Harry Farr, 25, was shot, was given the honour of unveiling the 10ft statue sculptured by Andy De Comyn. Mrs Harris, an 87-year-old widow from Harrow, north London, said: "1 am very proud and very grateful that now we have somewhere we can come and pay honour to those soldiers who I consider were wrongly executed. "Most were suffering from post traumatic stress, which today is recognised as an illness." Mrs Harris's father, a regular in the 1st Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment, was sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force in November 1914. By May 1915 he had been admitted to hospital suffering from shell shock and was treated for the next five months. However, during the Somme offensive of 1916 he was ordered to take rations to the front line. As he approached amid the exploding shells that were falling on the trenches he refused to go forward. He was tried and found guilty of desertion at a court martial and sentenced to death. Mrs Harris did not find out until she was 40. "My mother was too ashamed to tell me but it explains a lot of things that made my mother very sad over the years."
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