.. although popular legend today is that he was somehow railroaded and executed as an innocent man....
I don't recall any defence being mounted regarding "following orders" at the time,...
The argument I've always heard put forward is that they were wrongly [unfairly] convicted as scapegoats for the empire,
not that they didn't do it.
https://www.awm.gov.au/about/our-work/publications/wartime/18/villains-or-victims " All parties agree – even Morant and Handcock admitted it – that the men shot the prisoners. The main issue concerns the justice
of the convictions and the sentences. ...
...They admitted shooting 12 Boer prisoners, but claimed they had received orders to take no prisoners."
Do you have a source for the executing of Argentine prisoners in the Falklands?
NCO Corporal Vincent Bramley, 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment...battle of Mount Longdon.
described how, after the mountain was won, wounded and captured Argentines were arbritarily bayoneted and shot.
He suggests that some of the dead were mutilated, their ears cut off as trophies.
"....A group of our guys had assembled some Argie prisoners on a cliff above where we had dug a body pit for their dead.
Now, with the battle over, they were shooting prisoners and toppling them down to be buried. It was an outrage and senior officers
stepped in immediately before the executions could get out of hand. But in the cauldron of emotions after the battle they decided
not to take further action. Court martials were the last thing we needed."
Events described have been confirmed by other paratroopers.
British Officers who served at the Falklands and then became career politicians seemed to demonstrate reluctance in wanting
the MOD to conduct an inquiry concerning such claims by other veterans of the conflict.
It gets more murky and politically complicated when claims include the capture and execution of foreign mercenaries which were
alleged to include soldier of fortune Americans.
