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"It was still the Victorian Age. It was a disciplined age. The ordinary person didn't have much money, but there was a sense of duty. It was a church-going era. There was a great deal of discipline. It was very different, but it was a comfortable life in most cases," said Lyn McDonald, a World War I historian, who has written several books on the war including "The Roses of No Man's Land" and "Somme".

Cleanliness was next to godliness there, and the infantry troops were appalled by the dirt, the lice and rats in the trenches. The filthy conditions were awful for the soldiers, she said.

There were so many men coming down with shell shock, she added.

Nora High is the niece of Private William "Billy" Nelson, who was executed in August 1916. After two years of trench warfare, he suffered shell shock.

Her mother hid the facts from the family for years. She fought in World War II and witnessed the decapitation of man. After she came back shaken, her mother revealed how her uncle died.

What does this mean for her family? "It's wonderful, wonderful. I want to thank the newspapers and all the media. We couldn't have done it without the help of the media," she said. But she said it was too late for many families whose closest family members have died before these pardons.

Lyn said that pardons were such a gray area. "They weren't all for cowardice and desertion," she said. Many were executed for murder and rape, which at the time were capital offences.

We then moved on to the US where Callie McCune, a student in the US, has helped to clear the name of Clyde Kennard. In the late 1950s, Mr Kennard tried to transfer to the University of Southern Mississippi, but segregationists there wanted to prevent a black man from going to the university. Campaigners say that Mr Kennard was framed for a crime and sent to prison. He has

We then discussed the case of . He was executed in 1953 in the murder of a policeman. Following his death his family campaigned to get his name cleared. He was given an partial pardon by then Home Secretary Michael Howard in 1993. But unhappy with that his family continued campaigning to clear his name and in 1998 the Appeal Court quashed Bentley's conviction on the grounds the original trial judge was biased against the defendants and misdirected the jury on points of law.

His niece, Maria, said the framily fought so long because Derek had not actually killed the policeman but had reportedly said: "Let him have it". And he repeatedly denied ever having shouted that.

Helge Dietrich sent us this text from Sweden:

What should be condemned is not the individual but more a system that condemns him to death for n o t killing other individuals

Shannon in Berlin wrote this comment:

If anything these pardons serve as a sign post to our development as a society and cast a critical eye over the ignominy of the past, allowing us to learn from forgotten mistakes and reflect on how we may react today in similar situations.

Should Guenter Grass be stripped of his Nobel Prize?

Hellmut Karasek said that Guenter Grass should not be condemned for what he did during the war but for his hypocritical condemnation of others who had Nazi ties.

Stephen called from Washington in the United States. Guenter Grass came to his attention after seeing the film of the Tin Drum. He said it was a public service to write the novel, and he said that it was important to realise because of the novel how bad it was during the war under the Nazis.

Stephen's wife says that no one knows more about the horror of alcoholism than an alcoholic.

Hellmut took the analogy one step further and said that Guenter Grass was like someone who condemned drunkards and said that he never touched a drop an alcohol but then turned out to be an alcoholic himself.

Stephen said that he is 65 now, and he says, "I would not have seen issues now the same way that I would have seen when I was 17." His wife is German, and his family has discussed this at length.

But Hellmut believes that by not admitting his involvement with the Waffen SS, the he has ceded some moral authority. Guenter Grass asked others not to be silent about their youth.

Karlos in Germany sent us this e-mail:

We have to distinguish between the actual SS and the Waffen SS in wich Gras served. The Waffen SS had nothing of the eliterien Spirit of the actual SS. It was a oart of the army, not more. And it is impossible to live a life in wich in hindsight After 70-80 years one finds nothing to Look down on.

Dante Mazzari sent us this e-mail:

That Grass was in the SS does not make him a bad author. It is possible the Nobel committee would not have given him the prize had they known of his past, but that would have been wrong. We should judge authors by their contribution to literature alone.

M.M. Matthews in the UK had this to say in an e-mail:

If Grass had admitted to being a Nazi earlier, his books may never have been well received by the international community, and their impact might have been much smaller than it was. I think he's more than made amends for what he did as a child.

And we had this text message from Krzysztof Wasilewski in Gorzow Poland,

Pope was a member of Hitlerjugend and a Whermacht soldier and nobody cares so why Grass should be judged.