The Government is probably going to pardon more than 300 British soldiers executed for alleged cowardice and desertion during the First World War. Is this an act of political correctness or belated justice? JIM GREENHALF reports

In February, 1993, Brit-ain's then-Prime Minister John Major explained why a posthumous pardon to the 307 First World War British soldiers shot at dawn was not practicable.

"We cannot rewrite history by substituting our latter-day judgement for that of contemporaries, whatever we might like to think. With the passage of time values and attitudes change," he said.

Two years later, however, on the 50th anniversary of Victory over Japan Day, Britain sought an apology for atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army between December, 1941, and August, 1945.

And on Good Friday, 1998, the governments of Britain, the Irish Republic and the United States brokered a peace accord for Northern Ireland that called for a substantial change in "values and attitudes."

If the pardon just granted to Private Harry Farr, of the West Yorkshire regiment, executed in October, 1916, is indeed extended to the other 306 soldiers shot at dawn - as an example to their comrades at the front - the Government will not be rewriting history but belatedly acknowledging a terrible injustice.

A good many of the 908,371 British and Commonwealth soldiers killed between 1914 and 1918 (another two million were maimed or wounded) perished either by machine-gun fire or artillery fire.

The pounding of the guns, the shrieking of high-explosive shells, the experience of trench warfare in Belgium and France, shattered the nerves of thousands of men.

Officially the British Army did not recognise the condition known as shell shock, not for ordinary ranks at least. The luckiest were sent back to the rear trenches for a brief period of rest, then sent back up the line.

Officers, however, were shipped back to Britain and sent to special clinics like the one at Craiglockhart in Scotland where the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen were sent for months of treatment for a condition the authorities called neurasthenia - a posher term for shell shock.

Many of the 307 men shot at dawn were volunteers who had seen active service at the front. Private Harry MacDonald, from Keighley, was a veteran of the Boer War in South Africa. He signed up out of patriotic duty and was sent to Gallipoli and then, in 1916, to the Somme, where he was buried alive by a German shell.

After a brief rest he was sent back into battle. At that point he decided he had had enough and made his way back towards the coast. He was arrested, charged and sentenced to death. The military authorities ignored the court's recommendation of clemency.

Harry MacDonald, the army doctor declared, had suffered "an attack of cowardly imagination." He was shot on Saturday, November 4, 1916.

Bradford Pals Herbert Crimmins and Arthur Wild had joined up like thousands of other young men, eager to serve their country. They had fallen asleep in a field after a drinking session and had missed their regiment's move towards the front.

Although they gave themselves up and three witnesses testified that Wild was suffering from shell shock, and officers spoke of the excellent character of both men, they too were roped to posts at dawn and shot for the crime of desertion.

In 1915 the poet and novelist Robert Graves, an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, had his first experience of what he called "official lying."

While resting at Le Havre, he read a back file of Army orders that contained reports of some 20 men who had been shot for cowardice or desertion. Yet a few days later a government minister in the House of Commons denied that sentence of death for military offences had been carried out on any member of His Majesty's armed forces.

In November, 2002, the Bradford Pals Mechanics Institute First World War group issued a statement calling for a blanket pardon to be given to all 307 soldiers.

Mrs Pat Featherstone, a retired Bradford nurse, is a member of the group. After learning about the case of Wild and Crimmins she formally "adopted" former wool sorter Crimmins.

She was naturally overjoyed by the news of the expected general pardon.

"Everybody who passes through this world, I don't care if they of the highest or the lowest, is deserving of some respect. No person is born bad. It's circumstances that change people. We can now offer these soldiers respect.

"When you read the papers of the court martials you realise these men were made scapegoats; they were executed as an example to others. I am a great believer that you should walk a mile in another man's shoes before you judge him. This pardon is long overdue," she said.

Former national serviceman and poet Frank Dickinson said of the pardon: "I would go along with it. I have got all the books about the Bradford Pals. I have great sympathy for them.

"My father, Ernest, his brother Frank and a cousin, Gordon, joined up in 1915. Only my father came back.

"If Siegfried Sassoon hadn't been an officer (he was a Second Lieutenant) he would have been executed for what he did (Sassoon wrote to The Times criticising the Allies' conduct of the war).

"I think it is appropriate that they are issuing this pardon before the last First World War veteran dies."

The last man to die by firing squad was Louis Harris from Leeds. He had tried to volunteer in 1915 but had been turned down as medically unfit.

However, such was the slaughter on the Somme in the summer of 1916 that he was conscripted and served two years. But in November, 1918, the very month of the Armistice, the week before the fighting stopped, Louis Harris was charged with desertion.

A grateful nation shot him. He was 23.

That's why many will believe that a pardon for those men is not rewriting history, as John Major declared in 1993, but a correction of a grave injustice.