He Was No Coward

Harry Farr was born in north London in December 1890. His life ended while tied to a post, without a blindfold, shot to death by his fellow soldiers at the height of the First World War.

In between, he served two years as a regular soldier before the war, fell in love, got married and became a father to baby Gertie, before spending two years on the Western Front with the West Yorkshire Regiment.

Yet his service to his country was to end in disgrace when he was officially branded a coward and condemned to death despite showing signs of shell shock in what was to become the most infamous miscarriage of justice of the Great War.

For years his tragic demise was kept quiet by his relatives, the shame of the circumstances echoing down the generations until his granddaughter Janet Booth discovered his fate in the 1980s.