306 British Executed in WWI to Be Pardoned

More than 300 British soldiers who were executed for cowardice, desertion or disobeying orders during World War I will be pardoned, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday.

The decision came after a decades-long effort by the family of Pvt. Harry Farr. In 1916, a firing squad executed the 25-year-old for cowardice after he refused to return to the front lines.

Farr’s 93-year-old daughter, Gertrude Harris, went to the High Court last year to press the case for a pardon, arguing that Farr had been diagnosed as suffering from shell shock a year before he was executed.

“I am so relieved that this ordeal is now over and I can be content knowing that my father’s memory is intact,” Harris said in a statement.

Defense Secretary Des Browne said the government would seek parliamentary approval to issue pardons for the 306 soldiers.

Many are believed to have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of trench warfare.

Browne said Tuesday that he had decided to grant a group pardon because the evidence did not exist to assess each case.

“I believe it is better to acknowledge that injustices were clearly done in some cases, even if we cannot say which -- and to acknowledge that all these men were victims of war,” Browne said in a statement. “They have had to endure a stigma for decades.”