Of the 346 soldiers executed by the British army in WWI, only three were British army officers.

 

Shot At Dawn

There were 3,080 deaths sentences given to soldiers serving in the British army during WWI, of which, 346 were actually carried out. The overwhelming majority of soldiers executed (266 out of 346), were shot for desertion. Most of these soldiers were private soldiers. Only three British officers were executed during WWI. (Source: Tommy - Richard Holmes).

In his book called 'Memoirs of a British Infantry Officer', Siegfried Sassoon, says that many British army officers lost their nerve, but they weren't shot for cowardice. Many of these remained in the barracks or were given desk jobs back in Blighty. Sassoon said you couldn't do this with Tommy. The ordinary soldier was given a No. 9 pill and he stayed where he was until he was wounded or killed.

In October 1915, Second Lieutenant Edward Underhill, "wrote bitterly that his county men had no idea what the war was about." Many did think that they were fighting a war to keep Britain from being ruled by the Germans. Although the Germans did shell and bomb parts of Britain, an invasion of Britain, was not really part of Germany's war aims. A British infantry officer, remarked on, "how much more seriously the company would take the war were the (Ypres) Salient, around Preston, or Bolton, or Manchester.”

Richard Holmes writes that, "Two general truths define the British soldier's relationship with his enemy on the West Front: the first is that he generally had a high regard for the Germans and the second, is that the fighting man, rarely felt a high degree of personal hostility towards them."

It seems that the Saxon Germans disliked the Prussians, more than they did the British. The same can be said of men from Alsace who were fighting in the German army. If Robert Graves is to be believed, both the Germans and the British, disliked the French, because they ripped both sides off.