The day Harold’s guilty verdict was passed, the British Judge Advocate General began its trial of Sapper Cecil Henry Frederick Honess at Allied Headquarters in Rome. The British JAG chose an officer from its legal staff, Major S. J. Collins, as its prosecutor. Major J. S. Barnes, from the Royal Ordnance Corps, was selected to represent Charlie Honess. The timing of the trial to begin February 22 was not an accident. The British court intended to call the same witnesses as the Canadian prosecutor had at Pringle’s trial. Maria would appear and speak through an interpreter; the detectives from the SIB would give precisely the same testimony as they had at Harold’s court martial, right down to the sentences they used. The prosecution would also call its star witness, Private Bill Holton, who would add the usual Holton flourishes. At Charlie’s trial Holton would claim he tried to break up the fight between Honess and Lucky, saying that the Sapper had told him to “Get out of the way. This has nothing to do with you.” Holton would say that Honess had said, “He asked for it” after shooting Lucky. In hushed tones, Holton would tell the panel that right after the shooting, he was frightened for his life and that Honess had threatened him. Holton was unable to explain why he then accompanied his would-be assailant on a two-day trip to Florence. Before the trial began, Honess was shown a copy of Holton’s statement and he was succinct in his assessment. Only two words were necessary: “Lying bastard.”1
Charlie Honess stared listlessly as his court martial began and the trial’s president, Lieutenant Colonel W. J. Bostock, of the Royal Pioneer Corps, told him he was “accused of murdering Private J. McGillivary alias Lucky. To that charge do you plead guilty or not guilty?”
Honess replied, “Not guilty, sir.”
Outside, it was a sunny, cool day, and Honess may have looked longingly out the courtroom windows, wondering if he would ever walk under blue skies again. The court was stifling and claustrophobic. The man known to the Sailor Gang as Charlie Honess found himself looking backwards, realizing that somehow over the last five years—five years that comprised one quarter of his life—everything he had ever been had disappeared. Now he was poised to lose everything he had ever once hoped to become.
Despite having grown up in difficult circumstances, at one time his future had seemed promising. Honess had been an above-average student, but he was from a poor family and does not appear to have had a happy home life. He left school at age fourteen. At age fifteen, he ran away from home and joined the army. His father eventually caught up with him and had him discharged. Honess spent the next two years working as a labourer. He had native intelligence and he studied in his spare time, teaching himself to speak both French and Italian. When he reached seventeen, Honess re-enlisted; this time there was nothing his father could do about it. In 1938, he married.
When war broke out in 1939, it was a golden opportunity for Honess. It was a chance to become a hero.
During the Battle of Britain, when the Nazis bombed London, mercilessly killing 40,000 Londoners, Honess volunteered to work in a bomb disposal unit. Bomb disposal meant defusing unexploded bombs and there was no room for error. Miss a switch and the bomb disposal worker became a casualty. Bomb disposal workers were often blown to pieces so small that their bodies could not be found. On one day alone twenty bomb disposal engineers were killed. The job required iron nerves, demanding that a man focus all his concentration on the subtle nuances of the steel eggs dropped from planes by the Nazis, designed to blow him to smithereens. With his creativity and street smarts, Honess had enough confidence to stick it and he became a respected member of this elite unit. Honess’s military record states that Honess was “in the thick of it for quite a while in Hackney.” The army has a tendency toward understatement; when a military report states that an individual was “in the thick” of it, a civilian can read that he was in the thick of a lot of serious trouble. In 1941, one of the bombs Honess was working on detonated. Honess was seriously wounded and his co-workers appear to have been killed. After this incident, his wife would later report, “his nerves were shaken and he was subject to fits of depression.”
Still, shaken or not, to the army Honess was a skilled and seasoned sapper, and as such he was invaluable. In 1942, he was sent to the Eighth Army in North Africa. Normally, a soldier would be given an embarkation leave, two to four weeks to spend with his family before leaving on an assignment that might cost his life. Time before North Africa was tight, however, and Honess did not qualify for leave. This, said his wife, “caused him to write very worried letters.” In North Africa, Honess cleared minefields. It was dangerous, dusty work. After Africa came the invasion of Sicily and then the invasion of Italy. Again, the life of a sapper was precarious. Mines were cleared, and Honess also found himself building bridges under enemy fire.
In July 1944, Honess received a letter from his mother saying that a V2 rocket had destroyed his parents’ house and that his wife, who had been living with them, had moved out. It is difficult to say what Honess read into this news. The man who wrote worried letters home may have thought there was more to the move than a pragmatic relocation. Whatever his concerns, it is clear that this news was the tipping point. As the Eighth Army prepared to attack the Gothic Line, Cecil Frederick Honess went absent. Beginning at the end of July, all letters from his wife were returned to her unanswered. He drifted, aimless, drinking heavily. A maddening cycle began: when Honess was AWOL, he grew ashamed and despondent, and he turned himself in. When imprisoned, he became indignant and restless, and he escaped. Finally, the wheel stopped spinning: he landed in Rome, adopted the name Charlie, met Bill Croft and joined the Sailor Gang.
During his trial, Honess’s lawyer argued that the shot the Sapper fired into Lucky’s liver had not been fatal. He maintained that Pringle and Croft, whom he described as “assassins,” acted without Honess’s knowledge or consent and that it was the Canadian and the Sailor who decided that Lucky was a liability and needed to be taken on the proverbial one-way ride. “I do not think the accused could by the wildest stretch of imagination be called a leader of men,” Honess’s lawyer told the panel. “And to visualize him taking any part in dissuading this man from doing something of which he had not had warning I do not think can be imagined at all.”
Maria was once again called to testify. Through an interpreter, she described the Sailor Gang’s activities the day of the murder. “What was the relationship between Charlie and Lucky that afternoon?” she was asked. “Were they friendly?”
“They did not talk a lot,” she answered. “I was with Bill and they more or less sat. I did not notice if they spoke to each other or not.”
Maria said that at about eleven o’clock, Joe Pringle, Bill Holton and Charlie Honess came to the house on Via Pistoia.
“Did you hear them talking?”
“They woke up Bill; then they started to talk.”
“Did you understand what they were talking about?”
“No.”
“Did you notice anything about any of the ones that came in?”
“I noticed that Carlo was very angry indeed.”
“Was he doing much talking?”
“When Lucky came back he talked to him. I do not know what they said.”
“Did you notice anything about Carlo’s dress?”
“It was stained with blood.”
Unlike Pringle’s lawyer, Honess’s defender decided to have his client testify. Major Barnes asked the Sapper about his relationship with Lucky. “Well, we were very good friends,” Honess answered. “He used to take me out a lot to learn how to drive.” The Sapper described the night of November 1 in detail. When Lucky came into the house on Via Pistoia, Honess said he asked him, “Where have you been?” Lucky seemed “in a hell of a temper” and he began swearing. He said something about Honess deserting him in the bar. Lucky walked into his room, threw his shoes on the floor and called Honess a “yellow bastard,” saying, “I told you what I would do to you.” Then he went to a chest of drawers, where Honess knew he kept his gun. Honess drew his own pistol from his back pocket and stuck it in Lucky’s ribs. “Shut up and don’t move,” he said, “or I’ll shoot.” Lucky grabbed the wrist of the hand the gun was in and threw an arm around Honess’s shoulder. “You haven’t got the nerve to shoot,” he told the Sapper. They struggled for a few seconds and then the pistol went off.
After Honess fired at Lucky, the Canadian stood for a second and then collapsed, as though someone had given him a push. He caught hold of Honess, almost dragging him down. Honess asked him, “Is it bad?” and Lucky answered, “Get a doctor. Get me to a hospital.” After a couple of seconds, he said, “What did you shoot for, Charlie?” Then, “It is all right, Charlie, it is only my arm.” Pringle appeared, saying, “We must get him to a hospital.” He grabbed hold of Lucky, said, “I’ll get the jeep,” and ran outside. Honess picked up Lucky and dragged him to the front door. There, Holton grabbed Lucky’s legs and the two men carried him out of the house toward the waiting jeep. Before leaving Lucky’s room, Honess stole a glimpse into the half-open drawer. Lucky had been reaching for his little black book.
Honess described the trip in the jeep as “very bumpy,” recalling that Lucky seemed to be in pain and had said “Take it easy” two or three times. Honess said the main reason for the ride was to get Lucky medical attention. “I had not done anything so bad that Lucky could not go to hospital,” he maintained. Honess knew the village they were driving toward. “We had all been there two or three times before, Joe Pringle had pointed out this hospital and showed us where he got away from the Military Police.”
“What did you think would happen to you if you took him to a military hospital?” The prosecutor asked Honess. He replied, “I did not care what happened to me.”
Honess said that the last words Lucky said were “Where are we going and how long will we be?” Then, he remembered, “Lucky never answered me, and he never groaned any more and he was dead quiet.”
In the jeep, Bill Croft and Pringle discussed whether Lucky was dying; they decided to pull over and see if the Cape Bretoner was indeed gone. Once they reached the field at Torre Gaia, Croft, Holton and Honess carried Lucky out of the jeep and laid him down. Honess stayed back from the body, leaned against the vehicle and thought he was going to vomit. He said Joe Pringle walked up alongside Lucky and drew his Beretta, bending down double, almost touching Lucky with the muzzle of his pistol. Then Pringle fired into his chest. At the same time, Honess heard clicking. The noise turned out to be Bill Croft’s gun. “This won’t fire,” Croft said. “Joe, lend me yours.” Then Croft fired a bullet directly into Lucky’s skull, saying, “That was one I owed him.” Croft walked to the back of the jeep, where Honess was standing.
“What did you fire those shots for?” Honess asked him.
“It’s all right,” the Sailor replied. “They’ll think the Italians done it.”
The memory of that night deeply affected the Sapper; he became weepy under cross-examination.
“You saw Joe take his pistol and go deliberately close to the body and point it at his chest?”
“That is right.”
“What did you do when he did that?”
“I just stood there.”
“But Lucky was your pal, remember, the one you were going to take to hospital?”
“What could I do; I was flabbergasted.”
“You did not do anything at all.”
“No.”
“You just stood there and let him do it?”
“Yes.”
“Were you happy when he did that?”
“I do not know what I thought.”
“Or were you happy that you had killed Lucky. Did you do anything when Croft pulled out his silver-plated pistol and clicked it?”
“I could not; I was paralyzed.”
“You heard Croft, after his pistol misfired, ask for Joe’s?”
“Yes, that is right.”
“You knew what he wanted it for?”
“I did not.”
“Do yourself justice. You knew what he wanted it for. You knew perfectly well that Lucky’s body was going to be dropped off somewhere?” the prosecutor asked him.
“No, I did not know that.”
“What did you think was going to happen to Lucky?”
“That they were going to look at him. Myself, at that stage, I did think Lucky had died.”
“You thought he had died?”
“Yes, because I spoke to him and he never answered, and he looked queer as he lay in the back of the jeep.”
“From that moment onwards did you see anything about Lucky which gave you any reason to believe he was still alive?”
“No.”
“He was limp when you took him out?”
“He was limp when we took him out.”
“As far as you know from the moment that he never spoke to you he might be dead?”
“Yes.”
“Was the idea of going up some turning, or something, to see whether he was dead or not?”
“To examine him, yes.”
“To see whether he was dead or not?”
“I do not know that because Joe turned down the side turning.”
“You had to keep an eye open for the turning, had you not?”
“Joe told me to look for a turning and then we came to it just as he said it.”
“Prior to that you had formed the opinion in your mind that Lucky might be dead?”
“I had thought of it. It was possible.”
“And I have no doubt you said something of that sort to Joe?”
“No, I did not.”
“Why not, you were all in the party together?”
“No,” said Honess. “It was my party.”
“It was your party in the sense that you had shot him, and the others were helping you to remove the injured man, or the body, from the house, that is right, is it not?”
“They were helping me to get him to a hospital.”
“You thought he was dead?”
“I did not think he was dead. I thought there was a possibility.”
“You thought there was a possibility and you thought it would be a good idea to have a look and see. Did you not suggest that to Joe? Joe was your pal, you remember, and he was helping you.”
“He was not helping me. He was helping me take him to hospital.”
“Joe was helping you. He knew what had happened, had a pretty shrewd idea what had happened?”
“Yes, he knew that I had been the cause of the shot at Lucky.”
“Was there no conversation at all in that jeep about what Lucky’s present condition was?”
“Not between me and the others. I did not know what was said but Bill said something just as we turned, before we turned off the side turning, about Lucky dying. That was what it sounded like to me.”
CHARLIE HONESS’S TRIAL LASTED only two days. In his summation, the prosecutor recounted the events of the night of the murder and maintained that Honess had murderous intent when he shot Lucky. About the friendship between Lucky and Honess, he pointed out that “between men of this character and circumstances the term friendship is probably quite different from the way which we might mean. They hang together not because they liked each other, but they were all in the same boat and had to hang together.” In his summing up, Honess’s defender said that Lucky’s shooting was
a pure accident resulting from the struggle of two half-drunken men. The accused, I suggest to you, is not a criminal. He is a fool, and I say that though he is here in the room, and I think he will be the first to agree with me in the light of what has happened in the past. But a fool is not the same as being a criminal. He got himself into bad company and bad habits, and he is now reaping the fruit of what he has sown. I suggest that, if given a chance and the necessary environment and training, he can become quite easily a very useful member of society and a good husband to the wife waiting for him in England, to say nothing of his parents.
Like Bill Gunn at Harold Pringle’s trial, the judge advocate made great pains to caution the panel about Bill Holton’s testimony. Knowing “the sort of person he is, it is important that you should consider his evidence very, very carefully indeed before you act upon it and believe it.… If you accept his evidence he is an accomplice and as you well know, gentlemen, it is very dangerous to convict an accused person on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice and in a case of this kind that would be a danger which you would not probably be prepared to undertake.”
He was wrong. The panel deliberated for a little under half an hour before finding Charlie Honess guilty and sentencing him to death. To the Sapper, the verdict may have seemed like his only real means of escape. Even on the run, Honess had felt trapped and had often found himself wanting to surrender and go to prison. He sometimes thought he could serve his time and have a clean slate. Yet going home must have seemed impossible. His friends and family in England had got on with their lives. They had jobs and children and homes. Meanwhile, if one included the time he had spent defusing bombs, Cecil Henry Frederick Honess had been at war for four and a half years before deserting. Like most soldiers who came under fire, he had collected memories that would dog him for life and he had grown “worldly,” as the people at home would say. There must have been visions of battle that he could not leave behind—burning houses in London, fragments of men on the desert in North Africa, mines exploding in olive orchards in Italy. At first, he thought time and alcohol might wash them away, but as the months passed the visions only grew more vivid. It was as if his memories were outraged by his attempts to quiet them and they were rising up, demanding his attention. Booze helped muffle them, but it always wore off.
Honess’s final adventure had been a month running wild in an ancient city. Yet that time spent on the Via Appia and the terrible events that followed it were the only tangible life Honess now possessed. The Sailor Gang had become more real than anything he could now imagine waited for him back home. They were family. “I did not know anybody else,” Honess said of Bill Croft and the rest. “I had not any money and if I wanted some and they had some they would give it to me. They were the only people I knew. It was the only way I could eat or sleep.”