Is a pardon in sight for Billy Nelson, one of 306 soldiers shot by firing squad in WWI?
“Every Armistice Day, my mother shed buckets of tears. We’ve got Billy’s Bible, I got that when mother died. She used to lay that out on a piece of blue satin cloth, and she would cry,” Norah High remembers now. “She always said: ‘I won’t cry any more because that only upsets Billy. He doesn’t want me to cry. Everything’s fine for him now.'” “Every Armistice Day, my mother shed buckets of tears. We’ve got Billy’s Bible, I got that when mother died. She used to lay that out on a piece of blue satin cloth, and she would cry,” Norah High remembers now. “She always said: ‘I won’t cry any more because that only upsets Billy. He doesn’t want me to cry. Everything’s fine for him now.'” Norah’s mother, Billy Nelson’s sister, was only 13 when he died in 1916. Private Nelson was only 19 and had served in France for less than a year when he was shot – executed by his own side, like more than 300 other soldiers. Now, almost 90 years after the start of the Great War, ministers are finally consideri
