Remembrance Sunday this year was a good one for the Shot at Dawn campaigners. Since 1990 they have sought pardons for more than three hundred servicemen executed during World War One for 'military offences': desertion, cowardice and disobedience. The pardons, announced by the MoD in August, were largely the result of growing press coverage, discreet encouragement from the Irish government and the fact that the case of Private Harry Farr, shot in 1916 for cowardice, was due to return to the High Court, with a reasonable chance of success for his descendants - including his daughter, who's now in her nineties. The pardons, which are included in a new Armed Forces Act, received royal assent four days before the ceremony at the Cenotaph.

LRB 30 November 2006 | PDF Download