A man of conscience

Today’s podcast on my morning walk was about conscientious objectors in World War 2. This led me to think of my maternal grandfather, Reginald, who was a conscientious objector in World War 1. At least I think he was. Conscientious objectors in World War 1 were almost universally condemned and ostracised, and this guilty secret from his past was never mentioned, as far as I can remember.
 
The only evidence I have is a sentence written by my mother, years later:
 
“While working on the land during the Great War, Father had lived on little but cold porridge in a billy can, often eaten under a snowy hedge rather than face the jeers of his neighbourhood, to whom a conscientious objector was equivalent to being the scum of the earth.”
 
Reginald was 26 when universal conscription was introduced in England in 1916. He was married with a two year old daughter. Another daughter, my mother, was born in 1918.
 
There were some 16,000 conscientious objectors in England in World War 1. Some went to war in non-combat roles like ambulance drivers, some went to prison, some were court martialled and some, like Reginald it seems, were drafted into essential jobs at home.
 
It can’t have been easy for Reginald to take the stand he did. I think it would have been on religious rather than political grounds. He was a fervent, evangelical Christian, with an unquestioning belief in the literal truth of the Bible. So I think his conscientious objection would have been founded on the Biblical exhortation ‘Thou shalt not kill’.
 
Reginald died in 1959. He was a complex man, scarred perhaps by that early experience. He could be stern and judgemental, but he was also optimistic and generous and funny, and always a man of conscience.

I wish I could turn back time and talk to him about it.