Название: Boy Soldiers of the Great War
Автор: Richard van Emden
Издательство: Pen and Sword Military
Год: 2021
Страниц: 488
Язык: английский
Формат: epub
Размер: 10.1 MB

After the outbreak of the Great War, boys as young as twelve were caught up in a national wave of patriotism and, in huge numbers, volunteered to serve their country. The press, recruiting offices and the Government all contributed to the enlistment of hundreds of thousands of under-age soldiers in both Britain and the Empire. On joining up, these lads falsified their ages, often aided by parents who believed their sons’ obvious youth would make overseas service unlikely.

These boys frequently enlisted together, training for a year or more in the same battalions before they were sent abroad. Others joined up but were soon sent to units already fighting overseas and short of men: these lads might undergo as little as eight weeks’ training.

Boys served in the bloodiest battles of the war, fighting at Ypres, the Somme and on Gallipoli. Many broke down under the strain and were returned home once parents supplied birth certificates proving their youth. Other lads fought on bravely and were even awarded medals for gallantry: Jack Pouchot won the Distinguished Conduct Medal aged just fifteen. Others became highly efficient officers, such as Acting Captain Philip Lister and Second Lieutenant Reginald Battersby, both of whom were commissioned at fifteen and fought in France.

Old Father Time would empty the Western Front of underage soldiers. As the months and then the years slipped by, so the proportion of lads serving overseas in contravention of the Army’s published regulations tumbled. Time passing achieved as much, perhaps more, than the British Army did when, at the behest of parents and a supporting birth certificate, lads were withdrawn from the firing line. Time made men out of boys. A seventeen-year-old lad serving overseas in 1915 might pass his nineteenth birthday (the minimum age for foreign service) in 1916 and would be no be longer eligible for evacuation to the safety of a base camp or a boat trip home.

Some thousands of underage lads remained overseas in 1917 and 1918, the number killed and wounded are testament to this, but by comparison with those of all ages serving in a theatre of war, their numbers were mercifully small. By contrast, the numbers underage and overseas in 1915 and 1916 are truly staggering. Had Britain withdrawn, en masse, all those who were underage serving on the Western Front in 1915, then the British Expeditionary Force would in all likelihood have been defeated.

In this, the final update of his ground-breaking book, Richard van Emden reveals new hitherto unknown stories and adds many more unseen images. He also proves that far more boys enlisted in the British Army under-age than originally estimated, providing compelling evidence that as many as 400,000 served.