Shot at Dawn
The grave of Victor Manson Spencer is one of Victor Manson Spencer of Southland was one of five soldiers with the New Zealand Division who was executed after field courts-martial in World War One. Shot at dawn on February 24 1918 for desertion, his grave is at the Huts Cemetery close to Ypres. He was the last soldier executed during the war. 
1,094 Commonwealth war graves at The Huts
Cemetery some six kilometres from Ypres.
All five were pardoned by the New Zealand Government and in 2005 the war medals that had been withheld for almost 90 years were presented to their families along with the ANZAC Commemorative Medallion and the New Zealand Certificate of Honour.
Victor Manson Spencer was born in Otautau, Southland, in 1894. An engineer by trade he enlisted as Private No. 8/2733 in April 1915 naming his aunt, a Mrs Goomes of Bluff, as next of kin. A few months later sailed for Suez with the 6th Reinforcements of the Otago Infantry Battalion.
He saw service at Gallipoli, by 1916 was serving on The Somme and by 1917 with the First Battalion of the Otago Regiment in Flanders. By this stage, after the horrors of the campaigns he had been through, he was suffering severe trauma from what was known as shell shock. He deserted on August 25 1917, was captured and faced harsh military discipline at a time when shell shock was the offence of mutiny or desertion, punishable by death by firing squad.
On January 17 1918, he was convicted by a Field General Court Martial for desertion on August 13 1917 and sentenced to death. He was again convicted and sentenced to death after the Field General Court Martial revised its findings and changed the date of desertion to August 25 that year.
At 6.40 am on February 24 1918, Victor Manson Spencer was executed, one of five soldiers serving with the New Zealand Division and one of a total of 308 serving with British forces to suffer that fate.
Twenty-eight New Zealand Division soldiers were court-martialled during the war and 10 of these men were sentenced to death. Five had their sentences reduced after pleas for mercy by New Zealand.
The effect on the families of those executed was serious and lasting. The men's medals were withheld, their names were not on memorials, the stigma attached was considerable and the hurt intense as other families paid tribute to their dead each ANZAC Day.
In the 1990s an Invercargill MP began campaigning for pardons for the five on behalf of the families involved and in 2000 the Pardon for Soldiers of the Great War Act was passed. It had begun as a private member's Bill in 1998.
With confirmation by the British, the pardons became official and the medals were presented to the families in July 2005. On ANZAC Day 2007, members of Spencer's family along with a delegation from Bluff visited The Huts cemetery and placed flowers and copies of the pardon documents on his grave.
An attempt was made to find a family from the small French town of Morbeque who are believed to have cared for Spencer but to no avail.
The other four New Zealand Division soldiers executed were:
Jack Braithwaite (a Dunedin-born journalist in the Otago Regiment; grave at the St Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen, France)
Frank Hughes (born in Gore and a labourer serving with the Canterbury Regiment; grave at Hallencourt Communal Cemetery, Somme, France)
John King (an Australian-born miner serving with the Canterbury Regiment; grave at the Trois-Arbres Cemetery, France).
John Joseph Sweeney (a Tasmanian-born labourer serving in the Otago Regiment; grave at the Dartmoor Cemetery, Becordel-Becourt, Somme, France).