226:, also of the 19th Battalion D.L.I., who had been similarly sentenced to death for casting away their rifles and abandoning their posts in the same affair. All three were transported to a field in a motor ambulance vehicle manacled and blindfolded, where upon arrival they were escorted from the vehicle and tied to three wooden posts fixed in the earth, and shot simultaneously by three separate firing squads of 12 men each from their regiment. The chaplain who prayed with them before their deaths remarked that he had never met three braver men. Stones' body was buried in the British military cemetery at
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185:, his officer, Lieutenant James Mundy, mortally wounded during an encounter with a German patrol approaching the British trenches, ordered him to go for help. Stones testified that he was unable to fire his rifle because its safety catch was on and the cover was over the breech, so he had jammed it across the
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In spite of Stones' statement as to the order that he had received, and one from his
Commanding Officer that: "he is the last man I would have thought capable of any cowardly action", he was convicted of "shamefully casting away his rifle" in the face of the enemy, and sentenced to death. The General
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Like many men executed for desertion in World War 1 in the
British Army, Stones became a source of shame for his family, and his name was rarely mentioned. His great-nephew, Tom Stones, only discovered that he existed accidentally while researching his family tree, but later became prominent in the
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and abandoned it to slow down what he took for a German raiding party entering the
British line, whilst he withdrew to the rear seeking help. He was subsequently stopped by Brigade police further back attempting to outside the forward line trenches area.
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whom had been tried and sentenced to death for desertion in the presence of the enemy in the same incident. Haig confirmed three of the death sentences (including Stones'), and effectively pardoned the remaining eight men.
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420:'Douglas Haig: War Diaries & Letters 1914–1918', by G. Sheffield & J. Bourne (Pub. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005).
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Council took the then unprecedented decision to add Stones' name to the war memorial in Crook, after the
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Entry for Stones' grave in
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in 1915. He was commended for his bravery several times, and fought in the
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https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/591197/stones,-joseph-william/
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before the war. When the war began in 1914 he volunteered to join the
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on 18 January 1917, alongside two Lance-Corporals, John McDonald and
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Night of 26 November 1916 and subsequent military legal proceedings
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356:"Place of honour for true hero shot as coward"
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549:– Profile on Shot at Dawn website
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593:Deaths by firearm in France
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547:A Brave and Bold Soldier
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248:Wear Valley
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145:Background
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256:John Reid
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135:cowardice
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262:See also
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