Boy Soldiers of the Great War (2 page)

The extreme youth of these two boys is by no means unique. Strudwick, in particular, is just one of a number across the battlefields who were aged fifteen when they were killed; most of them lie uncelebrated – indeed, unidentified as being so young. Nor does the death of Condon at fourteen make him the youngest soldier to have served at the front. There are cases of boys as young as thirteen, or even twelve, serving in France. I met one veteran, George Maher, who served briefly in France when he was thirteen years and nine months. He was sent back to England, along with five other underage boys. As George recalled with a smile:

One of them, as I discovered, was even younger than myself. A little nuggety bloke he was, too! We joked that he could never have seen over the trenches, that they would have to have lifted him up.

The story of the boy soldiers is one that may yet raise passionate debate. It is too easy to see it as one of innocent lads being sent as cannon fodder to the front by uncaring generals and politicians – lion cubs led by donkeys. The truth is far more complex. Whatever the failings of Great War politicians, their sons were not absent from the forces or, more importantly, from the front line. The Members of Parliament who voted on war issues were doing so in the full knowledge that their sons were likely to be the beneficiaries or victims of the decisions. By the time the war ended, those votes, however indirectly, had cost many leading politicians the lives of their children. They included the Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law, who lost two sons, James and Charles; the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, who lost his eldest son, Raymond; and the Undersecretary of State for War, Harold Tennant, who lost his son, Henry, and three nephews including the poet Edward Wyndham Tennant. Nor, given the extent of intermarriage between families of the political and social elite, did the death of one MP’s son leave other Members unaffected: Herbert Asquith was, for example, married to Harold Tennant’s sister.

When considering the story of the boy soldiers, it is important to remember that such politicians were men of their time. They had to make hard decisions and carried huge responsibilities, but they were not heartless; they could not afford to be.

However passionately I feel about the boy soldiers in the First World War, this book has no hidden agenda. Such an emotive story does not necessitate an attack either on the political elite of the time, who might have turned a blind eye to underage enlistment, or on the military or civil officers who frequently
overlooked a boy’s palpable youth so that he could fight. The connivance needed to enlist the number of underage soldiers who fought in the war was required at all levels, including the boys’ own parents and, not least, the lads themselves, who were willing to go in their thousands and who in many cases rejected an escape even when it was offered. This book will look at the political and social pressures that brought about their enlistment in the first place, and at the subsequent campaign to secure their discharge. It will, for the first time, make an assessment of how many fought and died between 1914 and 1918. But most of all, it is the boys’ own stories, told in their own words, about what inspired them to enlist and what made them continue to serve when the full horror of warfare became apparent.

Back in 2005, there was some speculation, largely among devotees of the First World War, about the origin and accuracy of the figures available. While any such assessment must rely on extrapolation, hypothesis and crude mathematics, there is, I believe, genuine historical value in the numbers given, and an extended note on how they were arrived at is set out in the last chapter of this book. A definition of what constitutes a ‘boy soldier’ is crucial. In August 1914, the age at which boys could enlist as full-time soldiers was eighteen; to serve overseas, they had to be nineteen. This rule lasted until 1918, and underpins what this book describes as underage soldiering. Even so, problems of definition abound. Is a boy who enlists at fifteen, serves overseas at sixteen, and is killed the day after his nineteenth birthday counted as an underage soldier or not? Is a boy who is killed at seventeen, but who, under military exception, was allowed to go to war, under age? It is not possible to reconcile all such conflicting issues, for much will depend on the attitude of the reader and the strict interpretation of the law as it then stood. Exceptions that enabled boys to go to France legitimately will be highlighted, but the basic premise is maintained that a boy had to be nineteen to see overseas action.

‘A bullet,’ wrote one veteran, ‘is no respecter of age’, and it is true that many incidents were not age-related and would have been the same if they had happened to an older person. Nevertheless, the reaction might be that of a boy rather than a man, as, for instance, in the case of a sixteen-year-old lad consuming alcohol and so breaking his word to his mother:

Well, Mum, I am sorry to tell you that I have not kept my promise to you not to touch intoxicating drinks. You see, we got rum when we were in the trenches and I used to drink the rum but I give you my word it was only to keep the cold out that I drank it. I haven’t touched anything else.

There were innumerable incidents during the course of the war when such underage soldiers willingly took part in a general attack. Once again, the experience is not in itself age-related, but I felt that there were times, particularly in direct combat with the enemy, when the boy’s story must be told to show the extraordinary ability of young lads to focus their thoughts and actions and to act like much older men. The actions of the Battles of Loos and the Somme, related by Dick Trafford and Frank Lindley respectively, took place when they were both just sixteen, and their descriptions are astonishingly mature and for that reason especially shocking.

There are many sources that refer to an individual as ‘a boy’ without any clarification of his precise age. I have, however, tried to quote only from young soldiers whom I know to have been under age when they enlisted and served on the Western Front. As time passed, there was an inevitable crossover. Almost all the boys who enlisted in 1914 and 1915 eventually came of age, if they survived, during their military service. In such circumstances, I have sometimes continued their stories rather than stopping the narrative on the day they became officially old enough to serve.

The incidents recalled in this book are in approximate chronological order, but at times the need to group related experiences in order to highlight a common theme has meant that the time sequence is not seamless. My aim has been to describe the experience of underage soldiering rather than primarily to maintain the strict order of the events of the war.

In preparing this book, I met the last surviving veterans who fought under age on the Western Front. I am immensely grateful to centenarians such as Cecil Withers, Tommy Thomson, Alfred Anderson, Albert ‘Smiler’ Marshall and Harold Lawton for sharing their experiences with me. Dick Trafford, who died in 1999, put their point of view:

The only thing I am pleased about is I can help; I can help the likes of you and my comrades, the First World War veterans. I feel I’m helping in some way, I can’t do any more. I put them on the same level as me. It’s nice to think that they’ve been through what I’ve been through. I also know what they’ve suffered.

This book is based essentially on oral history, but the story would be too complex to tell without the input of diaries, letters, newspaper columns and journals, all of which added new perspectives to an aspect of the war that has been widely acknowledged but consistently under-researched.

The boy soldier’s story in the Great War is an enormous subject, which encapsulates every theatre of conflict and medium of fighting, on the ground, by sea and in the air. It covers military ranks from private to captain, and includes everyone with an interest in the ages of those who served, from parents to politicians. For this reason, it has been necessary to concentrate almost entirely on the primary crucible of the conflict, the Western Front, including the Royal Flying Corps, which became the Royal Air Force in 1918. Other important theatres of war and one arm of the services, the Royal Navy, have had to be excluded.

While wandering around the Great War cemeteries that dot the battlefields of France and Flanders, I, like many people, have been fascinated by the inscriptions that appear at the foot of many gravestones. These were written and paid for by the families of those who died and, while all are heartfelt, a few are deeply poignant. At the start of each chapter I have reproduced one of the dedications that appear on the graves of underage soldiers, choosing especially those that stress their youth.

1
Youthful Dreams

ONLY A BOY BUT A HERO

4214 Private Frank Grainger,
16th Battalion Australian Infantry

Killed in Action 30 August 1916, aged 17

Patriotism was not universal in early twentieth-century Britain, but most people did not question their life-long allegiance to their native land. Communities demonstrated this through popular activities such as pageants and processions, celebrating the continuing prosperity of the nation and its empire.

On a more personal level, newborn children were often given names that reflected the nationalism of their parents – George Baden White, for example, was born in August 1900, the son of a gunner serving with the Royal Garrison Artillery in Malta. Thomas White, his father, was a patriotic man and, in choosing names for his son, he turned to military leaders made famous in the Boer War. Sir George White, holder of the Victoria Cross, had successfully defended the South African township of Ladysmith until its relief in February 1900; Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, better known now for founding the Scout movement, had similarly defended Mafeking until relieved in May that year. Across Britain there had been wild public celebrations at the news and both became national heroes. So the choice of names for the newborn baby sleeping soundly on the island of Malta was obvious: George and Baden.

Between 5 and 10 per cent of all children born in 1900 were given names associated, in one way or another, with the Boer War. After May, and for the next year, over 6,100 British children, mostly boys, were christened Baden and another 1,000 Powell. A few parents went further, christening their children Mafeking Baden or Baden Mafeking. In England alone, over 700 children, both boys and girls, were christened Mafeking, and over 800 girls were called Ladysmith or, after the other besieged town of 1900, Kimberley. Even General Sir Redvers Buller VC, who, as commanding officer in South Africa, had overseen many of the war’s military failures, had nearly 7,300 British children named after him, either Redvers or Buller; while in 1900 another 3,000 children were named Roberts after Field Marshal Lord Roberts VC, the man sent to replace him. Indeed, almost any name in South Africa mentioned in the press that year found its way into baptismal records, from Modder River Lampard to James Spion Kop Skinner. Thirty-five equally unfortunate children had Bloemfontein inserted in their names, thirty-four had Majuba; fifty-four had Transvaal; and six had the name of Stromberg.

No one came more highly respected than the Queen herself. The names Victoria and Victor became fashionable; ‘Victoria’ was fourteen times more common in 1897, the year of the Queen’s Jubilee, than in the previous year. The word ‘jubilee’ itself was sometimes given too, if not as a first then as a second or third name. Bertram William Jubilee Rogers was born during the fiftieth anniversary of the monarch’s accession to the throne in 1887; James Jubilee McDonald was born during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations ten years later. Both were to be killed during the Great War.

Adult patriotism had always permeated down to children. At school, headmasters had noted famous days in the military calendar, such as the Battle of Waterloo or the defence of Rorke’s Drift, and children dutifully stood in respect. The portraits of great military commanders adorned school walls, along with explorers
and adventurers, men to be admired, respected and emulated. Such tangible expressions of patriotism may seem extreme today but, for a great number of boys, young life was steeped in military glory and the great campaigns of the past.

A few of the children who would serve under age in the Great War could just about recall the joyous, Union-Jack-waving behaviour of adults during the Boer War, when Mafeking was relieved and a school holiday granted. They remembered, too, the national sorrow at the Queen’s death in 1901, when children wore black as a mark of respect. Her birthday, 24 May, was celebrated as a public holiday during her lifetime and from 1902 as Empire Day, a manifestation of pride in the nation’s achievements. In schools up and down the country, the day was rigorously observed: children turned out to parade banners on promenades and in parks, as brass bands played and local dignitaries made rousing speeches. George Baden White, who arrived in England in 1901, saw it all:

Each year we had a pageant. That was Empire Day, and most of us really revelled in it. The pageant consisted of somebody appearing as Britannia as the centrepiece, and the boys representing the major colonies, like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, paying homage to her. As part of the proceedings, we all wore either a red, white or blue cap, lined up to form the Union Jack, and, of course, finished up singing the National Anthem. I loved every minute of it.

This was a world in which monarchy, Church and army were fused together in impressionable minds as the bulwarks upon which the nation state’s security, peace and prosperity rested, each integral to the others’ survival. The Boy Scout’s three-fingered salute expressed this ideal, representing service to God, King and Country.

The Scouts were one of a number of uniformed youth organizations formed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
helping to promulgate, perhaps to engineer, future social cohesion; others included the Boys’ Brigade and the Church Lads’ Brigade. These all offered boys a taste of outdoor adventure within a framework of healthy Christian discipline and obedience.