William Harold Beynon, known as Hal, was one of the youngest Conscientious Objectors to die as a result of his treatment during the First World War. Born in Swansea in 1898, he was young enough to avoid conscription entirely until his 18th birthday in late 1916.

Hal may have worked in a reserved occupation, or had been employed on work considered to be nationally important as he appears to have only entered the system as a Conscientious Objector towards the very end of 1917. It is likely that he went before the Swansea local and Glamorgan Appeal Tribunals, which must have rejected his application for exemption as a CO. By January 1918 he had been arrested as an absentee from Military Service and handed over to the military as an unwilling conscript.

By 1918 the military had not accepted Conscientious Objectors, but did know how to deal with them quickly. Very soon after Hal had arrived at the Cardiff barracks he was given an order which he refused to obey as a CO. After a short court martial, he was given a relatively light sentence intended to remove him from the military system - 6 months hard labour - and sent to Wormwood Scrubs.

At Wormwood Scrubs he went before the Central Tribunal which was convened at the Prison to hear COs cases. If they were considered “genuine” COs, as Hal was, they were given the option of a transfer to the Home Office Scheme (HOS). The HOS was supposed to provide COs with less restrictive and repressive conditions to serve out their sentences, in exchange for getting them to do work of at least some national importance. In reality, Conscientious Objectors found themselves doing backbreaking and pointless labour that had little purpose beyond punishment in conditions that were occasionally no better than prison.

Hal worked at the Dartmoor Home Office Work Centre from April to November before being transferred to the Gloucester camp. There, he fell suddenly ill. The newspaper of the CO support organisation the No-Conscription Fellowship published his memorial on the 7th of November 1918, and wrote:

Hal Beynon, of Swansea, succumbed quite suddenly to an attack of pneumonia at Gloucester, where he was working under the Home office Scheme. Our comrade was arrested at Swansea in Jan of this year and was taken to Cardiff barracks where he was court martialled and sentenced to 6 months hard labour. After serving part of this sentence at Wormwood Scrubs, he accepted the Home office Scheme and was transferred to Dartmoor and later to Gloucester.

The Secretary of the Cardiff NCF writes:- “it is difficult to realise that our young comrade has gone from us. he was quite young - barely 20 years of age - and throughout the whole ordeal of resisting military service he was consistently bright and cheerful. At Dartmoor his happy spirit was an inspiration to many, and it has come as a shock that so hopeful a career should be cut so short.” We deeply sympathise with all his relatives in their sad loss.

Hal died suddenly, probably due to the flu epidemic and secondary pneumonia that was sweeping the country, hitting Home Office Centres and Prisons particularly hard. The final months of 1918, as the war they had been imprisoned for resisting was drawing to its end, Conscientious Objectors were among the victims of the epidemic following in its wake. A CO, malnourished, weak from lack of exercise and kept in cramped, damp and often filthy conditions could arrive at an HoS camp and be forced into heavy manual labour while already seriously ill. Hal, like many others, would have arrived at Gloucester already weak and unable to resist the waves of disease that accompanied the end of the war. Though thousands of others died of flu and pneumonia at the time, responsibility for Hal’s death lies with the government who had imprisoned him for the “crime” of having principles.

Hal is remembered along with the other COs who died during the war on the Conscientious Objector memorial plaque. The plaque carries an inscription that holds true to the aims of Conscientious Objectors like Hal who lost their lives in the struggle to resist war - “it is by the faith of the idealist that the ideal comes true”