he documents bear full witness and a family on the Franco-Belgian border remembers the boy who was shot at dawn.

The court martial of Private Joseph Byers, regimental number 15576, 1 Royal Scots Fusiliers, was a cursory affair that lasted less than 10 minutes. In the village of Locre, behind the Ypres trenches, three officers sat as judge and jury. The Dumfries boy was the fourth soldier to appear before them on January 30, 1915.

It was a day when leniency mixed with severity. A private from the Ist Lincs regiment received 28 days' hard labour for being drunk some hours after New Year's Day and striking an officer. A captain, a 52-year-old veteran who first served in the army in 1882, was reduced to ranks for allegedly ''allowing enemy to escape''. They were the fortunate ones.

Desertion was a different matter. Joe Byers was not represented by any legal counsel or any officer acting as ''friend''. If he required any warning of the gravity of his position it had been provided in the third case, of Private Evans who was sentenced to execution by firing squad after facing an unrelated charge of desertion. Evans was a regular who knew what to expect.

Young Joe had enlisted 72 days before, in the midst of the excitement and patriotic fervour that greeted Kitchener's first appeal for volunteers. Nothing could have prepared him for the reality of what he would face when he landed in France on December 5 after two weeks of rudimentary training. His plea was recorded as ''guilty'', the only word he uttered during the court martial. It represented suicide. No form of mitigation could be considered.

Yet there was at least one important fact that Joe withheld. Perhaps he imagined it would make things worse if the court learned he had lied about his age when he enlisted. The regulations required a minimum age of 19, though this would be reduced to 18 within the year. Campaigners for under-age victims who were shot at dawn have assumed that he was 17. His certificate shows that he was born exactly a century ago this year, on September 22. He was aged 16 years and four months on the day of his court martial. He had a week left to live.

Regulations and military practice required that an under-age Serviceman should be allowed to return home. If he declined, he would have to be moved to a relatively safe zone behind the lines. Unchallenged, Joe was moved up to the front line trenches.

Even if the court martial suspected Joe to be under-age, it is unclear if procedures allowed the question to be put after his plea of guilty. Instead, two witnesses were presented, one to testify, the other to submit a brief written report.

Corporal C Reilly, No 941998, Royal Scots Fusiliers, stated that the incident involving Private Byers had occurred on January 8. He told the court martial: ''I was in charge of a special party detailed for the purpose of carrying coke from Kemmel to the trenches. The accused, being one of the party, requested permission to fall out to the latrine saying he would catch the regiment up. I gave him permission and have not seen him until now. He did not come into the trenches.'' This was the sum total of his evidence.

If the report of the second witness, Gendarme Auguste Ayrault, of the local police, was read aloud, it is doubtful if Joe would have understood much of it without the aid of a translation. It was in French.

Officer Ayrault reported that at ten in the morning on January 18 he saw a uniformed British soldier on the road from Poperinghe to Ypres. It was necessary to arrange for interpreters. Giving his correct name and lying again that his age was 19 years and seven months, Joe said he had been in hospital at Kemmel. He was being treated for a throat infection (''mal de gorge''), possibly indicating bronchitis. The discharge was on January 15.

The rest of Joe's story was that attempts to rejoin his regiment were confused by conflicting information from different sources that it had marched to Pomeringhe, or Dickebouche or Zillebeke. Extraordinarily, this was the full case against Joe Byers. He was sentenced to be shot by firing squad. There was no right of appeal.

Statistics reveal that only one in ten execution orders were actually carried out. There was a substantial area for discretion. The last chance of salvation for Joe Byers lay with the commander of the 2nd Army, General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien. He approved the case as ''deserving of the full penalty'' on February 1, 1915. The grounds: ''Discipline in the 1st Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers has been very bad for some time past and I think a severe example is very much wanted.''

The fate of Joe Byers was sealed. He had the misfortune to join a batallion which was perceived as showing signs of indiscipline during a phase of the war when casualties were running at 96% of the August 1914 complement of regiments. They could look forward to Ypres, the Somme, Cambrai, and Passchendaele.

Only one aspect of the case appeared to trouble Smith-Dorrien. By pleading guilty, ''No. 15576 Pte. J. Byers'' had made it impossible for regulations to permit the taking of ''sworn evidence''. The general reflected: ''Although this is legally correct it is just a question as to whether, when a death sentence is involved, the court should not make the man plead not guilty and take sworn evidence.''

This suggestion was taken up in revised regulations. Thereafter, men on a charge of desertion or cowardice were required to plead ''not guilty'' automatically. The legal quirk was not considered sufficient for any review of the Byers case by the army in 1915, or by Dr Reid, who claims he has personally examined the individual case, in 191998.

On February 6 Joe Byers he was led out with Evans. In a field beyond the greenhouses of the Six Farm in Locre they were blindfolded and white targets were attached to their chests. The firing squad was brought forward and commanded to aim.

Margueritte Six was the youngest of the family who owned the farm. She found a position behind the house to witness the execution. The first volley killed Evans. A second volley went over the head of Joe Byers. A third volley was required.

''He did not die quickly,'' said Piet Chielens, curator of the Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres. ''The obvious implication was that the firing squad could not bring themselves to fire at this boy.''

The military grave of Private Joseph Byers still receives remembrance poppies in the graveyard of Locre Church, opposite the site of the former Six Farm.

Dr Reid's statement yesterday confirms that 15 months of close review has discovered no way round the legal problem that, by the terms of the 1881 Army Act, incorporated in the 1914 Army Act, the execution of Joe Byers cannot be challenged. The strict legal position will not allow justice to be done.

On the question of under-age executions, the Ministry of Defence stated in a letter to campaigners in April, 1997: ''The manual of Military Law in force at the time indicates implicitly that the age of criminal responsibility was 14 years, which means that the act of desertion by any Serviceman, including those who were technically under age, was correctly punishable by the death penalty if so directed by the court-martial.''

Who will come forward to seek clemency or the exercise of the Royal prerogative in the case of Joe Byers? The family lived in Queensberry Street and later in Catherine's Street. William was Joe's father. Joe had two brothers, Charles and Edward. Charles was killed in action in the Dardanelles on June 12, 1915, just four months after Joe's execution. Edward died in 1960, aged 67. Joe's older sister was Helen, born in 1890. She married Frederick Pidwell, a second lieutenant in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, in May 1915 and the couple had a child the following year.

qMajor Boxer, the president of Joe's court martial, died in action at Ypres.