In recent years diligent research has increased that number which is expected to reach some 20,000. Our own 'Objecting to War' project is also uncovering new information about the lives and experiences of these men which adds to the richness of our understanding of the times they lived in.

These men and their supporters, often wives and girlfriends, and men not eligible for recruiting, came from all walks of life. Resisting the siren voice of the military that ensnared hundreds of thousands of their compatriots, their reasons for resisting varied as did the intensity of feeling and commitment. As a consequence of these varied feelings and the capriciousness of the Tribunal system many spent years, often in solitary confinement, in gaols around the country, while at the other extreme others put on a uniform but refused to carry guns. In between the men struggled to explain to themselves as much as to others the meaning of the extraordinary situation they found themselves in and their responses to it.

To be trained to kill is surely extraordinary enough but then to be ordered by force of law to sail across the Channel and kill total strangers in vast numbers is surely deplorable. It is perhaps even more extraordinary that so many succumbed to taking part in this murderous enterprise.

Just 21 years after the signing of the Armistice and just six weeks before Britain entered into another catastrophic war the last memorial for the dead of the 1914-1918 war was unveiled in Britain. The ten million wasted lives, the millions injured, the 50 million dead in the flu pandemic which in all probability started in the sprawling British military camp in Etaples.