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 for two weeks.

[4] On 28 August 1916, a member of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), No.3254 Private Alexander Little, 10th Battalion, verbally abused a British non-commissioned officer after water was cut off while he was having a shower.

Jack Braithwaite, an Australian serving with the NZEF's 2nd Battalion, Otago Regiment, was considered to be a repeat offender, and after the death sentence had been confirmed by the British Expeditionary Force's Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Douglas Haig, he was executed by a firing squad on 29 October 1916.

27 Infantry Base Depot, was placed under arrest after he and other men were observed to have deliberately bypassed the military police pickets at the bridges that gave access to Le Touquet, which was out of bounds to other ranks.

His son later recalled: A large crowd of angry soldiers from the camp rapidly gathered near the "Pont des Trois Arches", and in a mob moved towards the town, failing to disperse, even after being told that Healy had been released.

H. Reeve, a military policeman, having fired at the crowd with a revolver, killing Corporal William Buchan Wood, 4th Battalion Gordon Highlanders, and injuring a French civilian woman standing in the Rue de Huguet.

News of the shooting spread quickly; by 7:30pm over a thousand angry men were pursuing military police detachments, which withdrew away from the camp back into the town.

On Tuesday 11 September 1917, fearing further outbreaks of disorder that were beyond the capability of the military police to handle, the Base Commandant requested reinforcements, as further mob protests gathered momentum.

[9] War poet Wilfred Owen, resting at Étaples on his way to the line, described the context of the mutiny:[10] Siegfried Sassoon's poem "Base Details" expressed the contempt of infantry veterans for the officers and NCOs who staffed Étaples: If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line to death.

[11] The English writer Vera Brittain served in the VAD at Étaples at the time of the mutiny; she describes the atmosphere of rumour and secrecy in her book Testament of Youth.

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 of his involvement in the mutiny.

[12][13] A BBC1 television 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.