A FATHER'S FIGHT FOR HIS SON'S HONOUR

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 90, 13 October 1934, Page 25

A FATHER'S FIGHT FOR HIS SON'S HONOUR

An aged father, who has spent all his small savings in a struggle, lasting twenty years, to clear his son's honour from the stain of execution for cowardice on the battlefield, has had to admit defeat, says the "News-Chronicle." A special court-martial in Paris upjieltl the Drumhead court-martial'a senftiice on the twenty-three-year-old Second-Lieutenant Chapelant.

Unable:to stand because of a shattered thigh, the lieutenant was tied to a stretcher, propped against a tree, and shot for surrendering to the enemy on October 11, 1914. "This is the supreme moment of my Jife for which I have worked for twenty years," the father said, between his tears, to the Court. "I have nothing left in the world — not even my son's good name. I ask you to restore -me that. I have not many more' years to live.''

So' painful was the scene in court when the lieutenant's father, who is seventy, made his appeal, that there was hardly a dry eye in the public benches. Even the court-martial's military guard of honour, standing with fixed bayonets, lost something of' their impassivity. According.to evidence at the appeal, Lieutenant Chapelant's company had boen reduced from 250 to thirty men when, at dawn on October 7, 1914, a violent German attack was launched against his sector. Some witnesses declared that the lieutenant < surrendered, and that he then obeyed a German officer, who ordered him, at the point of the revolver, to wave a white handkerchief at the French lines to induce more troops to give in. Other witnesses maintained that

Chapelant fought to the last and was taken prisoner, and although ordered to wave a white handkerchief he did not do so. .

. According to further evidence Chapelant 's commanding officer "stormed" at the wounded man, calling him a coward, and offered him his revolver to blow his own brains out. Chapelant refused, saying he had done his duty. The Public Prosecutor, in his final speech, declared that' Chapelant was nover surrounded, and that he could have defended himself further. •

It must not be forgotten, said the Prosecutor, that he was fighting on a vital point of the front, • which, if broken through, would have meant that the. road to Paris was open. .He asked for the rejection of the appeal. Speaking on behalf of Lieutenant Chapelant, M. Guernut recalled that the 1915 report of the inquiry ordered into the facts of the alleged surrender had stated that, the evidence pointed to the condemned man's innocence.

M. Guernut declared in closing that to try a wounded man who had spent two days . and nights in No Man's Land with a high fever and a shattered thigh was inhuman, and that statements taken from Chapelant in such circumstances were worthless.

The findings of the Court were based mainly on the confession which^ Lieutenant Chapelant is alleged to have made on his return to the French lines after the "white flag" incident. The confession was said to have been given to Colonel Grapin, who told the Court that he questioned Chapelant to obtain information about the enemy. The Colonel declared that he had no idea at that time that any charges might lie against the lieutenant.