Mark Briggs Punishment
After Major-General Sir Alexander Godley visited the camp, Mark Briggs, Archibald Baxter and Lawrence Kirwan were sent to the front lines. When the objectors were asked to walk to the front, Baxter and Kirwan did so, but Briggs would not and therefore suffered extreme consequences .
The next morning the captain and the military police sergeant came into his hut, and this is how Briggs records the experience
"The captain again asked if I was going up, and I replied, ‘No.’ The police sergeant then grabbed me by the wrists and dragged me out on my back to the parade ground, where three soldiers were waiting. The military policeman … found a long piece of cable wire, and, coming forward, fastened it around my chest immediately under my arms. The m.p. and the soldiers then harnessed themselves to the wire, and went off up the ‘duck-walk’ (a footpath constructed of planks with battens nailed across at short intervals, to obviate the difficulty of the soldiers traversing the mud). Along this track—as far as I could judge, a distance of about a mile—I was dragged on my back. … [My] clothes ... were dragged away, and consequently my back was next to the ‘duck walk.’ The result was that I sustained a huge flesh wound about a foot long and nine inches wide on the right back hip and thigh. The track crossed the edge of an old shell crater, which was full of water… The m.p. asked: ‘Are you going to walk now? Because if you're not, you're going into this shell hole.’ I replied I didn't know where I was going, but I wasn't going to walk up there, anyway. He immediately threw me into the shell hole, and dragged me through the water, and along the ground to the next shell crater, and by means of the long wire again pulled me through the water. When they got me out on to the bank at the other side, they just picked me up by the shoulders and tipped me head over heels back into the water. When I came upright with my feet at the bottom, the water was over my shoulders, The m.p. said: ‘Drown yourself now, you [bastard], if you want to die for your cause, You haven't got your Paddy Webbs and your Bob Semples to look after you now.’ They pulled me out, and dragged me along the ground to yet another shell hole, and they pulled me through this in the same way."
The next morning the captain and the military police sergeant came into his hut, and this is how Briggs records the experience
"The captain again asked if I was going up, and I replied, ‘No.’ The police sergeant then grabbed me by the wrists and dragged me out on my back to the parade ground, where three soldiers were waiting. The military policeman … found a long piece of cable wire, and, coming forward, fastened it around my chest immediately under my arms. The m.p. and the soldiers then harnessed themselves to the wire, and went off up the ‘duck-walk’ (a footpath constructed of planks with battens nailed across at short intervals, to obviate the difficulty of the soldiers traversing the mud). Along this track—as far as I could judge, a distance of about a mile—I was dragged on my back. … [My] clothes ... were dragged away, and consequently my back was next to the ‘duck walk.’ The result was that I sustained a huge flesh wound about a foot long and nine inches wide on the right back hip and thigh. The track crossed the edge of an old shell crater, which was full of water… The m.p. asked: ‘Are you going to walk now? Because if you're not, you're going into this shell hole.’ I replied I didn't know where I was going, but I wasn't going to walk up there, anyway. He immediately threw me into the shell hole, and dragged me through the water, and along the ground to the next shell crater, and by means of the long wire again pulled me through the water. When they got me out on to the bank at the other side, they just picked me up by the shoulders and tipped me head over heels back into the water. When I came upright with my feet at the bottom, the water was over my shoulders, The m.p. said: ‘Drown yourself now, you [bastard], if you want to die for your cause, You haven't got your Paddy Webbs and your Bob Semples to look after you now.’ They pulled me out, and dragged me along the ground to yet another shell hole, and they pulled me through this in the same way."
For the military files of Mark Briggs click on the link to the right
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http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=MW19180313.2.7 Briggs like all ‘soldiers’ was allowed to write home, however there was heavy censorship of what was actually sent back to New Zealand. Briggs wrote a letter to harry Holland editor of Maori land worker. It was published and on the front page of the magazine and spoke that his sprit has not been weakened and his views on war are still the same. This caused outrage to the New Zealand society. And is shown in the above link