On this date in 1915, Private Herbert Burden was shot for desertion — at age 17, still too young to even legally enlist in the Northumberland Fusilliers he’d deserted from.

This teenager rashly joined up at the outbreak of hostilities, fudging his age up by two years to qualify. It’s more than likely that he, and his real age, were known to the recruiters who signed him up. (He wasn’t the only child soldier in that war.)

A few months on into this less-noble-than-advertised perdition, with friends and comrades becoming burger meat all around him at the dreadful Battle of Bellewaarde Ridge,* the kid panicked and ran.

Burden is the “model” for the memorial statue a later, more soft-hearted British Empire put up in 2001 commemorating 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers shot during the first World War for desertion and cowardice.

* Here’s a book about an Irish battalion that was nearly annihilated in the battle.

Shot at Dawn memorial/Herbert Burden likeness photo (cc) Noisette.

On this day..

• 1721: Walter Kennedy
• 1775: Not Richard Carpenter, strong swimmer
• 1661: Antonius Hambroek, defying Koxinga
• 1972: Misao Katagiri
• 1834: Catherine Snow, the last hanged in Newfoundland
• 1797: David McLane, an American traitor in Quebec
• 1683: Lord Russell, Whig martyr
• 356 BCE: Herostratus burns the Temple of Artemis
• 1798: Anthony Perry and Mogue Kearns, Protestant and Catholic
• 1986: Vice-President Paulo Correia and five others
• 1976: Lt. Col. Abu Taher
• 1944: Col. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, for the plot to kill Hitler