Relatives spoke of their feelings at being allowed for the first time to remember their loved ones in an official ceremony in Whitehall - while the government continues to refuse to grant the men pardons because, it says, the evidence for this "just does not exist".

Many of the families had only recently found out what had actually happened to their ancestors some 80 years ago. Some did not even know that they had a relative who had been executed.

Some of the families discovered that relatives had been suffering from shell-shock - now known as post-traumatic stress disorder - and had panicked in the trenches.

The BBC's David Sillito talks to Gertrude Harris - just one of 100 relatives at the Cenotaph to honour the dead

The Farr family gathered at the Cenotaph to honour Private Harry Farr, shot in 1916.

Gertrude Harris, Harry Farr's daughter, said: "It's such an honour to feel that we can now recognise our soldiers that were wrongly executed in the First World War."

Now 84, Mrs Harris was 40 before heard the true details of her father's death, which her family had never discussed because he was shot for cowardice.

Private Farr was shot for cowardice in 1916

Her father had been a regular soldier before the war and was among the first men to go to the front in November 1914.

In May 1915, he was hospitalised for five months with shell-shock, after which he was sent back to the front, said Mrs Harris.

"He was at the Battle of the Somme, and that is really where his nerve completely went. I'm afraid from thereon that is how he was court-martialled," she said.

Tom Stones attended the ceremony to remember his great uncle, Sergeant Joseph William Stones.

He was 25 when he was shot after being court-martialled for allegedly casting away his weapon in the face of the enemy.

Mr Stones only found out his great uncle existed after going through some family papers.

He said: "His name had never been mentioned in my lifetime. His only brother - my grandfather - I knew till I was 21, but he never mentioned him."

Remembering the dead

Mr Stones acknowledged that the soldiers were finally being officially recognised, but he insisted that the government take a step further and grant the men pardons.

"It's no good people saying it's too late - the records were only available in the last two or three years so we could find out what happened," he told BBC News.

Nora High travelled from her home in Seaham in County Durham, to lay a wreath for her uncle Private William Nelson, 20, who was executed in August 1916.

He absconded three times but always at times of family crisis which included the death of his mother which left his 12-year-old sister to look after an infant brother.

Their father was a prisoner of war.

'Unjustly shot'

Her wreath read: "As the petals of the poppies fall so do my tears. For the life and love denied one so young all these long years. Unjustly shot."

Mrs High said: "I'm very angry and annoyed. They should have been given pardons years ago. There should be pardons for each and every one of them."

Newcastle-based former Merchant Navy seaman John Hipkin, 72, who became a prisoner of war at the age of 14 in World War II, was at the ceremony to speak for under-aged executed soldiers.

He recalled four private soldiers who all enlisted at 16 and were executed by the time they were 18-years-old.