More than 300 British soldiers were executed by firing squad for battlefield offences during the First World War. Lindsay Jennings hears how postumous pardons may finally be in sight.

ABRAHAM Bevistein was only three years old when his family fled to London, leaving behind Russian-occupied Poland. Abraham grew up with a cockney accent and as the First World War raged on, he became impatient to fight for his adopted country. He signed up at 16. He lied, not just about his age, but about his name and nationality so he could fight for Britain.

By the age of 17, he was dead, but not shot by the enemy or slain on the battlefield. Instead, Private Harris, as he was known in the British Army, was tied to a post and executed at dawn by his comrades in the 11/Middlesex Regiment. A white square of material had been pinned to his chest, marking the spot where his heart fluttered underneath.

Like tens of thousands of soldiers, Abraham was suffering from shell shock after being wounded on Christmas Eve in 1915 when a mine blew up in his trench. He could no longer face the horrors of war.

Today, his condition would be recognised as trauma and he would have been given psychiatric help. Ninety years ago his actions were simply seen as desertion.

John Hipkin hands over a photograph of the young private. Abraham's dark eyes stare out beneath his cap.

"That's a boy's face and those are the sloping shoulders of a young boy," says John, 79. "I can't believe they could shoot young boys."

We are in John's sitting room in Walkerville, near Newcastle, containing piles of books and newspaper clippings, past the hallway full of boxes. This is the epicentre of the Shot at Dawn campaign.

The campaign began after December 1990, when John read about the 306 British, Irish and Commonwealth soldiers who had been executed by firing squad under the British Army Act. The Public Records Office had released files of the courts martial which had, up to then, been kept secret.

John was outraged at what he considered to be a grave miscarriage of justice. Among the 306 were seven soldiers from the Durham Light Infantry and eight from his Uncle George's regiment, the Northumberland Fusiliers.

"I went down the list of names and came across a HF Burden," he recalls. "It had 17 in brackets for his age and I thought it must be a typing error, surely they wouldn't shoot a 17-year-old boy, who presumably must have joined up at 16."

In disbelief, the now retired history teacher went to London and read up about HF Burden. He discovered the teenager had been shot for desertion not long after he was involved in the savage battle at Ypres. He wasn't even represented at his court martial.

Ploughing on, he found the records for Private Harry Farr, whose daughter, Gertrude Harris, has been seeking a legal right for a posthumous pardon through the High Court.

Farr was shot for cowardice after refusing to return to the trenches on the Western Front. The 25-year-old had been in hospital for five months, suffering from severe shell shock. His medical records were not shown to the officers at his court martial, which lasted 20 minutes, and he was not represented. When dawn came, Farr refused to be blindfolded. He wanted to look his comrades in the eye. John was shocked when he read his file.

"The sergeant was saying 'if you don't f*****g move I'll f*****g well blow your f*****g brains out'," he says. "But after five months in hospital he wasn't fit for anything. He should have been sent home."

John understands what it was like to be a young boy far from home.

He was only 14 when he signed up for the Merchant Navy as a cabin boy during the Second World War, and, on his first voyage, the oil tanker he was on was captured by the German battleship Scharnhost, 600 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.

John and his shipmates ended up in a German concentration camp, Stalag 10 at Sandbostel, near Hamburg. He was there for six months before being moved to a camp built specifically for merchant seamen. Apart from feeling permanently hungry, they fared better than others. He was liberated on the eve of his 19th birthday after five years.

"It was the best birthday I've ever had," he says, breaking into a smile.

After he had read the courts martial files, he felt angry and powerless but reasoned there was something he could do. His first public protest was on St George's Day at Alnwick at the Northumberland Fusiliers' march. All he wanted to do was hold a board up, asking for a pardon for HF Burden, but two policemen arrived. They asked him not to hold up his placard and when he did, one of them rammed his arm up his back.

"It really angered me, I wasn't shouting. I had a piece of cardboard asking for justice, that's all," he says. "They nearly broke my arm."

On another occasion, in Edinburgh, he was arrested after protesting near the statue of General Douglas Haig, Britain's Commander-in-Chief during the First World War. He was locked up for five hours, but he carried on with his campaign.

Over the years, John has written countless letters, to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Tony Blair, John Major, and the Queen, where he asked her to use her Royal Prerogative of Mercy to pardon the men. The replies vary.

In one letter, the MoD says it considers anyone over the age of 14 legally responsible for his actions. In a reply on behalf of Mr Blair it is stated that pardons, in the legal sense, require evidence, and "unfortunately very little of the evidence available to the courts at the time has survived".

"I can't understand how no-one on any political side has ever mentioned the boys in Parliament," he says. "They don't exist. They're not spoken of and the reason is that they're ashamed."

He refers to the teenagers, as "my boys" often. "I can relate to those kids," he says simply.

Many of the executions were botched. The soldiers missing their targets or not killing them outright. It would be up to the officers to take a pistol and put a bullet through the soldier's head.

He is also angry at the way there seemed to have been one rule for the officers and another for the rank and file. "I'd never been class conscious until I took up this campaign," he says. He points out how the Queen's grandfather, King George V, pardoned officers of well-connected families who had been accused of battlefield crimes. Although two officers were shot during the war, he claims these were scapegoats, so the British Army could not be accused of only executing non-officers. Campaigners want the Queen to allow access to the royal files so they can examine the pardons King George granted.

John will also be going to London at the end of the month to hear the appeal against Defence Secretary John Reid's decision not to grant Harry Farr a posthumous pardon. There are still hopes the case could set a precedent that would mean all the soldiers could be pardoned.

Backbench Labour MP Andrew MacKinlay is also leading a drive for a free vote, which may happen as early as this month when a new Bill on Army discipline goes before Parliament.

The pardons are being backed by the Irish and New Zealand governments. It would also follow the examples of France and Germany, which decided posthumously to pardon the men their armies shot and build memorials to them.

After 15 years, John could finally see justice for 'his boys', for Abraham Bevistein, Harry Farr, Herbert Burden and all the other soldiers.

"It would reinvigorate the sense I have had all my life that British justice is about as fair as you can get," he says. "It will come out what happened to them. It will come out."

* To read more about the Shot at Dawn campaign log onto www.shotat dawn.org.uk