As the Northern Echo continues its campaign to persuade Prime Minister Tony Blair to pardon more than 300 soldiers executed for cowardice during the First World War, Gavein Englebrecht looks at one of the most shameful episodes in British military history.

MARINA BREWIS has cried many times over the death of her uncle, Peter Goggins -even though he was long dead when she was born.

And it is tears of pain she hopes will one day be transformed to tears of joy, with a posthumous pardon for the soldier who was executed for alleged desertion.

Ms Brewis, 71, of South Moor, Stanley, County Durham, said: "He was not a coward. He was on the front line and was following the order of a senior officer when he fell back to a reserve trench. That is all he did - only to get court martialled for desertion.

"His death caused years of suffering for his sisters.

"It would be marvellous if their names were finally cleared. It would be nice, when I go to heaven, to tell my mam, aunt Bid and aunt Margaret, his sisters. They would all be pleased."

The death of Lance Corporal Goggins, of the Durham Light Infantry, has been described as one of the most shameful episodes in British military history.

At dawn on January 18, 1917, the 21-year-old, who had been married for only six months, was led manacled to a stake in a clearing in a wood in France.

Alongside him were his comrades - Sergeant Joseph Stones, 25, of Crook, County Durham, and Corporal John McDonald, 28, from Sunderland. They were shot.

L Cpl Goggins' battalion had suffered heavy losses during the Battle of the Somme in July, when 60,000 British soldiers had died. In November 1916, his unit had come under heavy mortar fire in thick mist.

Sgt Stones and a captain had gone into No Man's Land to find out what was happening.

The captain was shot and the shocked sergeant ran back to his line, shouting "the Hun are upon us". L Cpl Goggins and Cpl McDonald retreated 20 yards to a reserve trench to fight off the attack. To the Army, that constituted desertion.

A letter from Private Albert Rochester, who was in detention for complaining about conditions in the trenches, gives a vivid account of the execution.

He wrote: "A crowd of brass hats, the medical officer and three firing parties. Three stakes a few yards apart and a ring of sentries around the woodland to keep the curious away.

"A motor ambulance arrives carrying the doomed men. Manacled and blindfolded, they are helped out and tied up to the stakes.

"Over each man's heart is placed an envelope. At the sign of command, the firing parties, 12 for each, align their rifles on the envelopes.

"The officer in charge holds his stick aloft and, as it falls, 36 bullets usher the souls of three of Kitchener's men to the great unknown.

"As a military prisoner, I helped clear the traces of the triple murder. I took the posts down. I helped carry those bodies towards their last resting place.

"I collected all the blood-soaked straw and burnt it.

"Acting upon instruction, I took the belongings from the dead men's tunics; discarded before being shot.

"A few letters, a pipe, some fags, a photo. I could tell you of the silence of the military police after reading one letter from a little girl to "Dear Daddy", of the blood-stained snow that horrified the French peasants, of the chaplain's confession that braver men he had never met than those three men he prayed with just before the fatal dawn. I could take you to the graves of the murdered."