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John Ronald Skirth (11 December 1897 – 1977) was a British Army who served in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War.
His experiences during the Battle of Messines and the Battle of Passchendaele, both in 1917, led him to resolve not to take human life, and for the rest of his army service he made deliberate errors in targeting calculations to try to ensure the guns of his battery missed their aiming point on the first attempt, giving the enemy a chance to evacuate.
Many years later, after retiring from a career as a teacher, he wrote a memoir of his years in the army, describing his disillusionment with the conduct of the war and his conversion to pacifism. In 2010 the memoir was published as The Reluctant Tommy, edited by Duncan Barrett.
Skirth saw action in the Battle of Messines, in which two of his closest friends, Bill and Geordie, were killed. On the same day he had an "epiphany" when he stumbled across the body of a dead German of about his own age, and realised that one of the shells he had targeted might well have killed him.Barrett 2007, pp. 70–72. This was to mark a turning point in his thinking about the war as he determined that he was morally responsible for his actions and for their consequences, despite the chain of command.Skirth and Barrett 2010, p. 77.
During the Battle of Passchendaele, Skirth and another friend, Jock Shiels, left their post when they discovered that their commanding officer had ignored an order to withdraw from the front line. Skirth was knocked out by a shell which killed Shiels, and subsequently suffered from shell-shock and amnesia. Following a period of convalescence in hospital in France, he was sent to the Italian Front in December 1917, where his battery was being reorganised. There, following a relapse of shell-shock, he was treated in hospital in Schio and at the mud spa at Montegrotto.Barrett 2007, pp. 79–80.
In Italy, Skirth made a resolution that he would do everything within his power to avoid further loss of human life.Barrett 2007, p.78. He felt that the "just war" he had signed up for was anything but just,Skirth and Barrett 2010, p.160. and was disillusioned with the army and the conduct of the war. In a church in the Italian village of San Martino, near Vicenza, he made a private pact with God that he would never again help to take a human life.Barrett 2007, pp. 76–78. He wrote to his future wife, Ella Christian, claiming that he had become a pacifist and a conscientious objector.Barrett 2007, p. 84. He also began a campaign of small acts of sabotage, introducing minor errors into his trajectory calculations so as to mistarget the guns, such that they "never once hit an inhabited target" on the first attempt, giving the enemy a chance to evacuate.Barrett 2007, p. 87. His actions were never discovered by his superiors.
Apparently he carried out this sabotage while still in Italy where he remained until February 1919,Skirth and Barrett 2010, p.297. aside from a fortnight of leave back in England in November and December 1918.Skirth and Barrett 2010, p.280. He received the British War Medal and Victory Medal for his war service but declined the Military Medal, which he felt was offered as part of an attempt to whitewash a fatal accident he had tried to prevent.Barrett 2007, p. 89.
In 1923 he and Ella Christian became engaged and the following year, after Skirth secured a job at the Little Ealing Senior Boys' School and found a flat they could share in Ealing, they married,Barrett 2007, p.90. on 29 December 1924, at the Church of St Barnabus in Bexhill.Skirth and Barrett 2010, pp.334335. In September 1929 their only child was born, a daughter whom they named Jean. (They had expected a boy, who would have been called John.)Skirth and Barrett 2010, p.338.
During the Second World War, the family was evacuated to South Wales with Skirth’s school. In his forties by this point and suffering from ill health, he was not expected to fight, but his anti-war views earned him the labels "crank, visionary, communistic and impractical".Skirth and Barrett 2010, p.344.
After the war, the family returned to Ealing, where Skirth and his wife Ella lived, in various homes, throughout their life together,Skirth and Barrett 2010, pp.336, 338 and where he continued to work as a teacher until he took early retirement in 1958.Barrett 2007, p. 66. He died there in 1977.Skirth and Barrett 2010, p.xiii.
Although Skirth had volunteered for the Army in 1915, as an idealistic patriotism, convinced that "King and Country" were causes worth fighting for,Skirth and Barrett 2010, p.24. it was not long before he became disillusioned with the war and the army.Skirth and Barrett 2010, p.75. He attributed this to a combination of his sensitive character, his Christian upbringing and sense of right and wrong, and, most significantly, the horror of his war experiences.Skirth and Barrett 2010, pp.345, 351.
After the war, Skirth remained a convinced pacifist for the rest of his life. He believed that Britain should not have declared war on Germany in 1939 and claimed that he would rather surrender and face occupation than take up arms against a hostile force.Skirth and Barrett 2010, p.351. Writing in the early 1970s, he expressed hope that the next generation of political leaders would not make the same mistakes as their forebears.Skirth and Barrett 2010, pp.352353.
Skirth gave the memoir to his daughter Jean in 1975, two years before his death in 1977. Although for many years she found it too upsetting to read in full, she felt that it was a story that should be shared with others, and in 1999 she donated four of the five ring binders, containing the bulk of the memoir but excluding its more personal sections, to the Imperial War Museum in London,Skirth and Barrett 2010, p.xiv. where they remain to this day. Imperial War Museum collections
Once it was made available to researchers and academics, Skirth's memoir began to attract attention, and his story was featured in Richard Schweitzer's The Cross and the Trenches (2003), Michele Barrett's Casualty Figures (2007), and in Ian Hislop's documentary Not Forgotten: The Men Who Wouldn't Fight (2008), in which Hislop interviewed Jean Skirth about her father's war experiences. Not Forgotten: The Men Who Wouldn't Fight, Series 3, Episode 1/1, Channel 4, 10 November 2008.
Not all criticism has been favourable. A review in the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are magazine remarks on the disparities between official war records and Skirth's version of events:
In response to general criticism received after initial publication that Skirth was a liar or a fantasist, Barrett revised his introduction to the paperback edition, published in 2011. He recognised that there were discrepancies between Skirth's account and historical sources which made his book an unreliable history, but still considered the book a valuable memoir of one man's personal experiences.Barrett 2011, pp. xxi–xxiii
In 2011, The Sunday Times reported that Skirth had been "...exposed for character assassination..." and that the Imperial War Museum, which had held Skirth's memoirs since 1999, "...has admitted they are mostly fictional". The report was based on research begun by Ruth Ward as part of a campaign to clear the name of her grandfather, Bernard Bromley, who had served with Skirth and whose character Skirth had besmirched. Ward's research, which was lodged with the Imperial War Museum when it was completed in 2014, identified significant discrepancies in Skirth's account.Ward pp. 133–134 It revealed differences in the biographical information of characters and in events described by Skirth when compared to official historical sources.Ward pp. 138–147 Ward concludes that "Skirth's war memoir was not a genuine account, or a semi-fictional one, but a satire" which "unfairly represented genuine figures" to "subtly and implicitly" ridicule the shortcomings of the British Army.Ward p. 151
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