The only mutiny in the British Army on the Western Front was in September 1917 at a training camp near Etaples. It is notable that there were no mutinies amongst front-line units, a state of affairs which Gordon Corrigan (in Mud, Blood and Poppycock) credits to British administration which ensured that units were rotated through front lines at regular intervals and rarely found themselves short of rations. Corrigan highlights that morale was comparatively high in and around the front lines, a counter-intuitive phenomenon which could be attributed to the camaraderie developed by soldiers in front line units (Richard Holmes discusses this in Acts of War).

Training camps, or Bull Rings as they were known, were a different matter. Soldiers would move to the camps before joining their units at the front and so would often not have the support of their parent regiment and may not even know anyone else in the camp. The training regime was harsh, arguably a necessity, but hindered by the quality of instructors. In Tommy, Richard Holmes states that front line units were keen to hold on to their better, more experienced soldiers and so when orders arrived to provide instructors for Bull Rings, they were prone to send lower calibre personnel.

At many Bull Rings, and at Etaples especially, there was a dangerous mix of absolute power and mediocre leadership. This is a situation well-known in modern militaries; the British Army’s problems at Princess Royal Barracks Deepcut in the mid to late nineties had much the same roots leading to a culture of bullying and abuse. It is difficult to know how much the authorities understood this in 1917, but tensions had been high in Etaples for some time when Gunner Healy, a New Zealander, was apprehended for desertion on 9^th September. Healy had been out of bounds in the local town of Le Touquet, a common misdemeanour at the camp, and a large crowd of soldiers descended on the jail to protest Healy’s arrest. The military police were called and during the fracas a corporal was shot dead by a policeman.

It is estimated that the crowd grew to over a thousand in strength and the military police were forced to withdraw. By 10^th September, and despite military police pickets, large numbers of personnel had left the camp and were holding meetings in the town of Etaples accompanied by demonstrations in the camp itself. This carried on until 12^th September when a detachment from the honourable Artillery Company arrived and, after one last break out to Etaples, order was restored.

As a result of the mutiny, Corporal Jesse Short was sentenced to death for mutiny, specifically because he encouraged some men to give up their arms and attack an officer. Another 36 soldiers were given sentences ranging from field punishments to penal servitude.