By Ian MacKenzie

EDINBURGH (Reuters Life!) - Voices from the 1914-18 "War to End Wars" are haunting audiences in Edinburgh this year, reminding theatre goers of the horrors of conflict while British soldiers fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two plays on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe -- one based on true accounts and the other on a young soldier looking back over his life as he awaits execution for cowardice -- are playing to packed houses at the annual arts extravaganza.

"Forgotten Voices" was adapted by director Malcolm McKay from reminiscences of veterans in Max Arthur's book "Forgotten Voices of the Great War."

Director Simon Reade adapted the other play, "Private Peaceful," from a novel by Michael Morpurgo in which an 18-year-old from Somerset recalls his childhood on his last night before facing the firing squad on charges of cowardice brought by a brutal sergeant.

The one-man performance by Alexander Campbell left the audience, ranging in age from young children to pensioners, in stunned silence as the executioner's shot rang out.

Last year, parliament passed an act pardoning the 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers executed by firing squad in World War One.

McKay told Reuters that what had attracted him to adapt Forgotten Voices was "a kind of beauty in the way people lived through the First World War and overcame these extraordinary experiences, the fantastic strength of spirit."

The book was made up of real-life recollections, many from the archives of the Imperial War Museum in London.

The five-member cast tells the stories of an officer, a sergeant, a private, an American "Doughboy" and a woman on the home front. The play ran in London for six weeks before coming to Edinburgh, and runs for a month in Oxford after the festival.

McKay said one fascinating aspect was that nothing much had changed in war.

"A lot of soldiers have seen it, and they say their stories are the same. I mean, the weapons are different, and the tactics are different, but the relationships between the men themselves, between the men and their officers, they are all very similar.

"And also the pain suffered by those left at home, the wives, the mothers and the families, and so on."

Actress Belinda Lang said she had to harden herself to continue playing Kitty Proctor, the munitions worker who gets a letter saying her husband is dead.

"But his letter was only from his sergeant, and I thought perhaps it was a mistake. So I wrote back to him. Then I got another letter to say that this sergeant had also been killed. Later on, I got the official news. It was all over. All over for me then," Kitty says as the lights fade out.

"I can't afford to be personally moved by it or I wouldn't be able to do it," Lang told Reuters.