KEY POINTS:
Fred Ryan proudly wears the military medals of his relative Private Victor Manson Spencer, who has been pardoned by the British Government after being executed during World War I.
Private Spencer, born in Otautau, Southland, faced a firing squad in France in February 1918 for desertion.
Two other New Zealanders, Jack Braithwaite and Frank Hughes, executed in the 1914-18 war for mutiny and desertion respectively, were also pardoned, the British Government confirmed yesterday.
The pardon, enacted by legislation announced in August, covers 306 men shot at dawn. The British Defence Ministry said that as well as British troops it applied to three from New Zealand, 23 from Canada, two from the West Indies, two from Ghana and one each from Sierra Leone, Egypt and Nigeria.
No Australian soldiers were executed for cowardice or desertion during the war although 121 were found guilty of offences punishable by death.
Convicted Australians had their sentences commuted and were mostly sent home. Their Government would not permit its soldiers under British command to be executed.
The British move follows New Zealand legislation in 2000 which pardoned the three New Zealanders - and two Australian-born men serving with New Zealand forces - who were shot for desertion.
The New Zealand legislation came after a Government-appointed inquiry concluded that shell shock or other stress-related disorders were a likely cause of the men's actions.
Mr Ryan, a Returned Services Association member, of Bluff in Southland, said the British pardon was important for his family and laid the matter to rest.
He said it had carried a stigma for his family.
"In the old days my father and family, they never ever spoke of it.
"We come from a long line of fighting people, the Ryans and the Spencers.
"It has been a relief off our minds. I wear his medals on Anzac Day, which I am entitled to do as long as I wear them on the right. I wear my medals on the left and his on the right.
"He was a very good soldier. He was due for rank, to be promoted to lance corporal.
"In a way they [the military command] didn't know what shell shock was in them days. Them blokes should never have been shot. That was an injustice."
British Defence Secretary Des Browne said it was important to acknowledge that all the pardoned men were victims of war.
"I hope that pardoning these men will finally remove the stigma which their families have lived with for years."
