Étaples Mutiny The Étaples Mutiny was a mutiny by British troops in France in 1917 , during the First World War . Background . Étaples , about south of Boulogne - sur - Mer , was at the time a small town with a thriving fishing industry and a fleet of sail - powered wooden trawlers , a few miles up the river Canche . It attracted painters from the USA , Canada , and Australia before it became part of an enormous army complex that stretched all along the Channel coast . One of these artists left a collection of paintings of the Etaples camp : the Australian Iso Rae Whatever the picturesque value of the town , it did not impress the British ladies who came to do their duty in the YMCA huts : in the words of Lady Baden - Powell , " Etaples was a dirty , loathsome , smelly little town " . On the other side of the river was the smart beach resort known officially as Le Touquet - Paris - Plage , and unofficially as either Le Touquet or Paris - Plage . Le Touquet was in effect officers ' territory , and pickets were stationed on the bridge over the Canche to enforce the separation . Etaples was a particularly notorious base camp for those on their way to the front . Under atrocious conditions , both raw recruits and battle - weary veterans were subjected to intensive training in gas warfare and bayonet drill , and long sessions of marching at the double across the dunes . After two weeks , many of the wounded would rather return to the front with unhealed wounds than remain at Étaples . But the context cannot be better described than by poet / soldier Wilfred Owen , resting in Etaples on his way to the line : The officers and NCOs in charge of the training , the " canaries " , also had a reputation of never having been at the front , which inevitably created a certain amount of tension and contempt , as expressed in Siegfried Sassoon ' s poem " Base Details " : The mutiny . It appears that relations between personnel and authorities at the camp had deteriorated for some time . They came to a head on Sunday 9 September 1917 , after the arrest of Gunner A . J . Healy , a New Zealander belonging to No . 27 Infantry Base Depot . He and others bypassed the police picket s patrolling the bridges that gave access to Le Touquet , which was out of bounds to troops . His son recalled : A large crowd of angry men gathered near the " Pont des Trois Arches " , heading towards town . They did not disperse , even when told the gunner had been released . It was clear that the protest over the arrest was only the tip of an iceberg and the atmosphere was tense . The arrival of military police only made matters worse and scuffles broke out . Suddenly the sound of shooting was heard . Private H . Reeve , a military policeman , had fired into the crowd , killing Corporal W . B . Wood of the 4th Battalion , Gordon Highlanders , and injuring a French woman standing in the Rue de Huguet , Étaples . Thereafter , the police simply fled . News of the shooting spread quickly . By 7 : 30 pm over a thousand angry men were pursuing the military police , who fled in the direction of the town . The following morning measures were taken to prevent further outbreaks and police pickets were stationed on the bridges leading into the town . Nevertheless , by 4 pm men had broken through the pickets and were holding meetings in the town , followed by sporadic demonstrations around the camp . On Tuesday , fearing further outbreaks , the Base Commandant requested reinforcements . Meanwhile , the demonstrations gathered momentum . On Wednesday 12 September , in spite of orders confining them to camp , over a thousand men broke out and marched through the town . Later that day , reinforcements of 400 officers and men of the Honourable Artillery Company ( HAC ) arrived , armed with wooden staves . The HAC detachment was composed mainly of officers and was a unit on which complete reliance could be placed . The HAC were supported by a section from the Machine Gun Corps . The threat worked : only 300 men broke camp and were arrested at Etaples . The incident was now over and the reinforcements were dispersed . Many men were charged with various military offences and Corporal Jesse Robert Short of the Northumberland Fusiliers was condemned to death for attempted mutiny . He was found guilty of encouraging his men to put down their weapons and attack an officer , Captain EF Wilkinson of the West Yorkshire Regiment . Three other soldiers received 10 years ' penal servitude . The sentences passed on the remainder involved 10 soldiers being jailed for up to a year ' s imprisonment with hard labour , 33 were sentenced to between seven and ninety days field punishment and others were fined or reduced in rank . Short was executed by firing squad on 4 October 1917 at Boulogne where he is buried in the Boulogne Eastern Cemetery . " Testament of Youth " . The writer Vera Brittain was serving in the VAD at Etaples at the time of the mutiny and describes the atmosphere of rumour and secrecy in her book " Testament of Youth " . Female personnel " were shut up in our hospitals to meditate on the effect of three years of war upon the splendid morale of our noble troops . " Meanwhile " numerous drunken and dilapidated warriors from the village battle were sent to spare beds . . . for slight repairs . " She says that it was mid - October before the mutiny ended . In a subsequent footnote she concludes that , " the mutiny was due to repressive conditions . . . and was provoked by the military police . " " The Monocled Mutineer " . William Allison and John Fairley ' s 1978 book " The Monocled Mutineer " gave a very imaginative account of the life and death of Percy Toplis and his involvement in the mutiny . It prompted questions in Parliament about the events of the Mutiny when it was first published , which led to the discovery that all the records of the Etaples Board of Enquiry had been destroyed long since . A BBC1 TV series also entitled " The Monocled Mutineer " was adapted from the book , and caused some controversy at the time of its first transmission in 1986 , being used by the press to attack the BBC for left - wing bias . Some advertising material issued to promote the series inadvisedly claimed that it was a " true - life story " . Official records show that Toplis ' regiment was en route to India during the Étaples mutiny . No evidence exists to show that Toplis was absent from his regiment . However , neither is there evidence that Toplis ever went to India , only ever getting as far as Malta . It is therefore contentious as to whether he returned to Europe in time to participate in it .