Famous War Crime Court Martial: The fight to clear Breaker Morant's name

Get it right, you bastards: the fight to clear Breaker Morant's name

Written by STEVE MEACHAM

The entire article is posted at: http://www.smh.com.au/national/get-it-right-you-bastards-the-fight-to-clear-breaker-morants-name-20091018-h2ym.html
October 19, 2009

A photograph from the Boer War showing Lieutenant Handcock, left, and Lieutenant Morant, second from left.
IT IS more than a century since Harry ''Breaker'' Morant told the Boer War firing squad about to execute him: ''Shoot straight, you bastards.''

But today, a petition will be presented to Parliament calling on the Attorney-General to order an official legal review.

Commander James Unkles, a serving Australian Royal Naval Reserve lawyer who is an expert in courts martial, has also sent a second petition to the Queen formally laying out grounds for a royal pardon for both Morant and the man executed alongside him, Peter Handcock.

After a comprehensive review of the military law under which they were sentenced to death, Commander Unkles has concluded both Australians were victims of a gross miscarriage of justice orchestrated by their superior officers - particularly the British war hero Lord Kitchener.

Commander Unkles's interest in the celebrated case - the subject of Bruce Beresford's 1980 film starring Edward Woodward as Morant - began when he decided to investigate (for academic interest and in his spare time) the role of their defending officer, Major James Francis Thomas, played by Jack Thompson in the film.

Had Thomas, a former Tenterfield solicitor clearly out of his depth, made critical mistakes?

''There has been a lot written about Morant, and a lot written about Lord Kitchener and his methods of dealing with the Boers,'' says Commander Unkles. ''But not much about the defending officer.''

In 1902, Morant was already well known in Australia as a expert horseman and bush poet. He, Handcock and a third officer, George Witton, were convicted of killing eight Boer guerillas and a Boer prisoner called Visser. Morant and Handcock were acquitted of murdering a missionary of German descent, and Witton's death sentence was commuted by Kitchener to life imprisonment. But the trio believed they had been acting on Kitchener's orders - to shoot any Boer prisoners.

Commander Unkles has now written a 6000-word article explaining why he believes Morant and Handcock should be posthumously pardoned.

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Michael Waddington is a court martial lawyer - court martial attorney that defends military personnel worldwide as well as deployed civilian contractors subject to the UCMJ. He defends Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard, and civilian contractor court martial cases. He has successfully defended military personnel as a court martial lawyer Army Navy Marine & Air Force court martials in Germany, England, San Diego, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fort Bragg, Fort Jackson, Fort Stewart, Fort Gordon, Italy, Iraq, Kuwait, Korea, Okinawa, Japan, Yokota, and throughout the United States.