#3057 Private Henry Palmer
1/5TH NORTHUMBERLAND FUSILIERS
TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD HENRY PALMER KNEW HE was going to die on 27th October 1916. From Wallsend, North Tyneside, Henry, among the eldest of nine children and working for a coal merchant at the onset of war, still lived with his mother, Phyllis, who was now a widow. Enlisting in the Northumberland Fusiliers, he arrived in France at the beginning of November 1915 and joined the 1/5th Battalion, a territorial outfit.
The Northumbrian Division, to which Henry now belonged, had not been engaged in any offensive warfare since his arrival on the Western Front. On 9th September though, his battalion moved north-east from Contalmaison and went into support lines. Their contribution to the Battle of the Somme had begun. That night, Henry listened as the troops on their right attacked High Wood. The Northumberland battalion’s proximity to the assault led to a stream of constant shellfire coming down nearby. The following day, Henry went into the front line, which was being regularly and fiercely shelled by the enemy. Casualties began to mount. Then there was the fierce noise and the surrounding chaos as the attack of 15th September went forward; Henry and his battalion remained to the rear manning trenches. The weather turned and showers swept the battlefield as they were relieved for a spell, but evidently there had been a mounting problem with Henry’s state of mind after these opening experiences near High Wood. He and his company went back into the line on the 20th and found it in a disgusting state. The following evening, orders came for some of the men to support an operation on a German trench and that appears to have been the final straw for Henry. At about 9:30pm, as he and his company were proceeding up to the front line, he fell out and disappeared, remaining absent for about twelve hours. He simply appeared the next morning, emerging out of the fog and saying that he had brought with him the ammunition that he had been asked to carry up. He arrived six hours behind his comrades with no coherent explanation.
Grave of Private Henry Palmer at Albert Communal Cemetery Extension. (Andrew Holmes)
On that day, Henry was attached to a team operating a Lewis gun in the battalion. As the men were going out and occupying German lines that had been vacated in front of them, at 9:15am Henry guided another member of the team further to the rear. They picked up spare parts for the gun and when the other man went to return, he could not find Henry anywhere. He looked for him up and down the trench and asked around, but Henry had vanished. Once again, a few hours later, the 21 year old simply reappeared.
All of this happened whilst the battalion was in the lines, but not imminently about to go into battle. A week later, however, Henry’s battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers received orders to participate in the same action in which Donald Forrester Brown had been killed near Eaucourt l’Abbaye. Henry was given orders to go forward and help seize 300 yards of trench in front of them in conjunction with the rest of the company. The assembly trenches were shallow and in several places simply did not exist, forcing some of the company to lie out in the open as they waited for zero hour.
It came at 3:15pm. The men on either side of Henry climbed up and moved off. He didn’t move. ‘We walked over, and halted twice, lying down before we reached the objective.’ By this time Henry had disappeared. At the time that John Sweeney was being executed a few miles away, Henry was again absent from his battalion. He wasn’t seen again until 2pm on 2nd October when he was spotted making his way up a communication trench towards the firing line. Henry was arrested pending a court martial.
It took place nine days later at Millencourt, just to the West of Albert, and all of his absences were rolled together for a charge of constructive desertion. The man in charge of the Lewis gun gave a damning testimony. ‘There are six in the team besides myself. It was impossible for the accused to have advanced without my seeing him.’ It was clear to those present that Henry was not capable of mounting a vigorous defence for himself, although he declined to have one made for him. Neither did Henry cross-examine or question any of the witnesses brought forward, which again was his right.
Of his disappearance on 21st September he said, ‘It was very dark and I was helping a stretcher bearer with bad feet and got left behind. There were a lot of shell holes and I could not find the company so I went back.’ He said of his wandering the following morning that he had gone off to ask for a cup of tea and that when he returned he couldn’t find his companion. ‘On the way back they were shelling so heavily that I could not go over the open.’ He then claimed to have got lost again moving about in the trenches near High Wood before finding his way back to the beginning of his journey again.
His explanation for his actions on 1st October was painfully simplistic and transparent. Henry falsely claimed to have started the attack with the rest of the gun team. Then he said he had been hit in the knee by something, he knew not what, when halfway over no-man’s-land and near the German wire. ‘I went back and stopped in the communication trench to rest myself,’ he explained. The trench was apparently full of men, but when he was asked if he sought medical attention about his injury, Henry said he hadn’t, that it hadn’t swelled up at all, it had just hurt the bone and made his leg numb for twenty minutes. To account for that time he said, ‘I sat in the trench rubbing my knee.’ There was not a mark on him to substantiate the claim that he had been wounded and a witness had claimed he had never advanced at all. Henry called no witnesses to defend him, although he did add that he had nothing marked against him since arriving in France. But there was the problem of Henry’s having been prone to wandering during his initial training in England. He was by no means unique in having been absent before embarking for war, missing parades or not arriving back from leave on time, but the eighteen instances he had marked against his name were hugely excessive. Henry was not a bright boy and had made no real attempt to mount a serious defence. He was found guilty of desertion only for 1st October and, on noting this, the officers overseeing proceedings added a notation to the sentence. ‘To suffer death by being shot. Strongly recommended for mercy on the grounds of the man’s intellect.’
A guilty verdict and a death sentence only actually meant death less than 10 per cent of the time. Most of such sentences were commuted. The brigade’s commander agreed with this sentiment in Henry’s case. ‘I am of opinion that state of discipline of the 5th … Northumberland Fusiliers is “good”. Therefore, no example need be set.’ In the battalion a man had recently also been tried for desertion and sentenced to death, a sentence that was afterwards commuted to penal servitude for ten years. ‘The behaviour of the battalion on the 1st October 1916 … was very good and their general behaviour in billets is quite satisfactory.’
Unfortunately the brigadier found opposition. Of Henry, the commanding officer of the battalion, probably going on information provided to him rather than a personal perspective, stated that: ‘Private Palmer’s character from a fighting point of view is poor, and as far as I can ascertain he has shown no instances of bravery. His general conduct is unsatisfactory … In my opinion he deliberately absented himself to avoid going into action.’ He was advocating the sternest punishment. As the case passed up the chain of command, General Pulteney, in charge of the entire corps, did not see the need. The battalion had a good record and he supported the court’s recommendation for leniency. However, the decision was ultimately passed to the divisional commander of the 53rd Division, who wrote, ‘I can find no mitigating circumstances in this case, and can only recommend that the extreme penalty be carried out.’ The brigadier appeared to have made an about turn. ’I consider that in view of the gravity of the offence of which this man has been found guilty, and after carefully considering the facts of the case, that he should suffer the extreme penalty.’
So Henry’s Palmer’s fate was sealed. The 21 year old was executed by firing squad on 27th October at 6:20am and was laid to rest at Albert Communal Cemetery Extension, plot I.P.65. In 2006, under Section 359 of the Armed Forces Act, Henry Palmer was pardoned.