'Shot at Dawn' The Shot at Dawn Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire England commemorates the 306 British and commonwealth servicemen who were executed during the Great War. It portrays 17-year-old British soldier Private Herbert Burden blindfolded and tied to a stake, a disc pinned over his heart, waiting to be shot by a firing squad. Burden, who falsified his age to enlist, had been Absent-without-Leave multiple times. When he left his post again, he was arrested and ac