The large Plymouth Brethren Community in Inverness led to a corresponding large community of Conscientious Objectors. Brothers John and Donald Grant were living together with their families in 1916 when both were swept up in Conscription by the Military Service Act.

John, 30 in 1916, worked for the Post Office, but had previously been in the Military, serving with the Cameron Highlanders Regiment from 1902-1905. The Regiment had been involved in the Boer War, and it is likely that John signed up expecting to go into active service. By the beginning of the First World War, John’s attitude to the military had changed, and he took up the Brethren’s doctrinal abhorrence of violent conflict. Like many other Brethren, John believed that he could take no active part in the conflict, and would not be forced to take life in war. As such, when Conscription was introduced in 1916, he applied to the Inverness Tribunal for exemption as a Conscientious Objector on the grounds of his religious faith. The Tribunal granted him “Exemption from Combatant Service Only”, a verdict that would have sent John into the Army as a non-combatant soldier. Resisting this, he appealed against the decision in April 1916, and then again in May, but each time his appeal was denied.

Despite appealing against this Non-Combatant service, it appears that John accepted it after his final appeal failed to secure Absolute Exemption. In July 1916, he was sent to the Hamilton Barracks to join the Non-Combatant Corps, 2nd Scottish Battalion. As a member of the Non-Combatant Corps, he would have been expected to act much as any other soldier, obeying orders and wearing a uniform. The NCC were intended to free up combatant soldiers from routine, labour and logistical tasks, giving the army more effective fighting men for the front lines. Some Conscientious Objectors willingly and happily accepted NCC service, and found the provision to obey both conscience and law acceptable. Others found it a difficult balance - firmly part of the war effort, but decidedly not a soldier, they could not satisfy their conscientious objection to warfare. NCC service fulfilled only part of an objection to war, and COs who accepted it grudgingly would have to strike a difficult balance between orders and conscience.

It is possible that John, with his several appeals against Non-Combatant Service, was part of the latter group. If he remained with the NCC for the duration of the war, it is likely that he served at Home and Abroad on labour and logistical tasks until demobilisation in mid to late 1919.