Shot at Dawn Memorial

Shot at Dawn Memorial

The memorial in 2014
Coordinates	52°43′29″N 1°43′28″W / 52.7248°N 1.7244°W / 52.7248; -1.7244Coordinates: 52°43′29″N 1°43′28″W / 52.7248°N 1.7244°W / 52.7248; -1.7244
Location	National Memorial Arboretum, Staffordshire, England
Designer	Andy DeComyn
Type	Sculpture
Material	Sculpted concrete statue, surrounded by 307 wooden stakes
Completion date	2001
Opening date	21 June 2001
Dedicated to	The servicemen executed by firing squad during World War I

The Shot at Dawn Memorial is a monument at the National Memorial Arboretum near Alrewas, in Staffordshire, UK. It memorializes the 306 British Army and Commonwealth soldiers executed after courts-martial for desertion and other capital offences during World War I.

The memorial is to servicemen executed by firing squad during the First World War. It is alleged that soldiers accused of cowardice were often not given fair trials; they were often not properly defended, and some were minors. Other sources contend that military law, being based on Roman rather than Common law, appears unfamiliar to civilian eyes but is no less fair.It was the court's role to establish facts, for example, not for prosecutors and defenders to argue their cases; and Holmes states "it was the first duty of the court to ensure the prisoner had every advantage to what he was legally entitled". If men seemed unrepresented it was because they generally chose to speak in their own defence. The usual cause for their offences has been re-attributed in modern times to post-traumatic stress syndrome and combat stress reaction. Another perspective is that the decisions to execute were taken in the heat of war when the commander's job was to keep the army together and fighting.

Of the 200,000 or so men court-martialed during the First World War, 20,000 were found guilty of offences carrying the death penalty; of those, 3000 actually received it, and of those 346 were carried out. The others were given lesser sentences, or had death sentences commuted to a lesser punishment; This might be forced labour, field punishment or a suspended sentence (91 of the men executed were under suspended sentence: 41 of those executed under suspended death sentences, and one had been sentenced to death (and had the sentence suspended) twice before). Of the 346 men executed, 306 were pardoned; the remaining 40 were those executed for mutiny or murder, who would have been executed even under civilian law.