'[4] Stones testified that he was unable to fire his rifle because its safety catch was on and the cover was over the breech, so he had jammed it across the trench and abandoned it to slow down what he took for a German raiding party entering the British line, whilst he withdrew to the rear seeking help.

This explanation has been challenged by historian Gordon Corrigan who noted that a rifle placed across a trench does not constitute a barrier, and a far more practical method of slowing the Germans would simply be to open fire on them.

[5] In spite of Stones' statement as to the order that he had received, and one from his company commander that: "he is the last man I would have thought capable of any cowardly action",[2] he was convicted of "shamefully casting away his rifle" in the face of the enemy, and sentenced to death.

[1] On 11 January 1917 the matter was placed before Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig as the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, along with the files of 10 other men from the 35th Division whom had been tried and sentenced to death for desertion in the presence of the enemy in the same incident.

[6] Stones was executed at Roellecourt in France by a firing squad on 18 January 1917, alongside two Lance-Corporals, John McDonald and Peter Goggins, also of the 19th Battalion D.L.I., who had been similarly sentenced to death for abandoning their posts in the same affair.