The Roberts brothers came from north Wales but the family moved to Bredbury near Stockport to enable their father to get work. Alfred had physical disabilities and would not have passed an army medical, however he chose to go before a tribunal as a CO. Though ordered to work on the land no farmer would employ him, so he came before the tribunal at least four times. After his brother Walter’s death the authorities became nervous and, as Alfred put it, ‘quietly forgot about me’. After the war he worked as a shop fitter and then an interior designer for a Manchester paint firm.