Boy Soldiers of the Great War (52 page)

These two photographs show the same group of underage and physically immature boys at Etaples camp on 18 July 1918. All had served in or close to the front line. It is only when they remove their uniforms that their youth becomes really evident, especially compared with the mature soldier in the foreground. They were kept at Etaples until fit or old enough to be sent back to the trenches.

VAD nurse Marjorie Grigsby returned to England from France after serving six months at both a Base Hospital and a Casualty Clearing Station, caring for the wounded and dying while she was still only eighteen years old.

Great Yarmouth, February 1918. At eighteen, Harold Lawton
(far left)
and his friends were sent to France to help stem the German advance. Just seven weeks after this picture was taken, he was captured, days after arriving at the front.

Seventeen-year-old Ernest Steele, a decorative box maker by trade, shortly after enlisting into the Queen’s Westminster Rifles in 1914.

Ernest was killed during fighting in September 1918. He had served over three years in France and been commissioned into the Machine Gun Corps. He is buried in Heudicourt Cemetery.

After Ernest’s death, his father began a book of remembrance in which he wrote short notes and poems for the next thirty years. This page shows a picture of the newly commissioned officer in 1917 alongside a typical entry made by his grieving parents.

The last letter written by Ernest the night before the attack at Epéhy. Within hours he was shot by a sniper as he reconnoitered a position for his machine guns.

The so-called ‘Dead Man’s Penny’ and scroll issued after the war as a commemorative gift from the nation to every bereaved family. This ‘penny’ was issued to the parents of Alfred Cooper, a sixteen-year-old private of the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry, killed in August 1915.

Albert Harvey, aged ninety-seven, holding the image of himself as a fifteen-year-old soldier in 1915. Albert served with the 1/4th East Yorkshire Regiment at Ypres before being ‘claimed’ by his family and discharged as under age in early 1916.

Acknowledgements

A special thank you to the staff at Bloomsbury, particularly Bill Swainson, the senior commissioning editor, who purchased the rights to
Boy Soldiers of the Great War
and re-published it after the book went out of print in 2010. As always I am very grateful to Emily Sweet for her editorial support and advice, as well as to Nick Humphrey, Anya Rosenberg, Ruth Logan, David Mann, Paul Nash, Andrew Tennant and Justine Taylor for their excellent work and kindness. I would also like to thank, once again, my agent, Jane Turnbull, for her encouragement and support.

I am also grateful to all at Testimony Films who helped in so many ways, including Steve Humphries, Mary Parsons, Nick Maddocks, Melissa Blackburn, Clare Titley, and in particular Lizzie Cosslett for all her devotion to the cause. I would also like to thank Mike Humphries, Madge Reed, Mike Pharey and Daniel de Waal.

As with any book that is oral-history based, the final product is only as good as the information used and, during the course of my writing this book, hundreds of people responded to adverts placed in the press for stories and images. There are far too many people to name but I would like to thank everyone for their kindness and help. In particular I thank Ron Alpe for the letters of his relative, Cyril José; Betty White and Ian Packham for the memoirs of George White; Alex McGahey for the letters of Ernest Fitchett; Lesley Molyneux for the letters and pictures of her grandfather Christopher Paget-Clark; Jim Grundy for the story of Howard Peck; Anthony Battersby for the story of Reginald Battersby;
Carl Jackson for the documents of his grandfather Percy Marshall; Peter and Joan Fearns for the cover image; Jeff Bugg for the story of James Walters; George Flint for the picture of John Flint; and the family of Horace Iles. A big thank you, too, goes out to David Empson for the story of Ernest Steele, and Peter Doyle for the story of Archie Gardiner. I would also like to offer my gratitude to John Cooksey for his interview with Frank Lindley, and Anne Pedley for her wonderful generosity, forwarding stories and information about underage soldiers that I would never have otherwise found, and Mary and Jackie Greenwood for the image of Lance Corporal William Plant.

Thanks are also due to Jeremy and Liz Skipper, Barry Bliss, Vic and Diane Piuk, Raymond Withers, Michael Stedman, David Bilton, Jeremy and Clair Banning, Peter Barton, George Heron, Mike Tyldesley, Sanjeev Ahuja, Martin Booth, Sam Eedle, Julian Johnson, Bill Walton, Peter Francis of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, William Spencer at the National Archives, Nigel Steel at the Imperial War Museum, Nick Fear for the interview with Bill Pain, Brenda Field, David Lock, Clive Hughes, Peter Simkins, George Heron, Jack Clegg, Jimmy and Dave James, and Lynda Welch, Michael Richards, M. Birkin, Mr Jennett, Brian Spear, John Rogers, Michael Green, Charles Bateman, Les Rideout, Harry Taylor, Barbara Jones, William Denyer, Elizabeth Lumb, John Tennant and to all those others who remain nameless but who have so kindly offered their help and precious stories. I hope this book does justice to the memory of all their relatives who served, and, in many cases, died so young.

I would like to pick out my friend Taff Gillingham for especial thanks. His remarkable knowledge of military history has proved incredibly reassuring and helpful, and the points he has made have been very gratefully received.

I would also like to offer huge heartfelt thanks to those who inevitably ‘suffer’ when I write, in particular my wife, Anna, who has to put up with the hassle and dislocation that being married to
a writer presents, and my mother, Joan van Emden, whose assiduous attention to detail and remarkable knowledge of the English language has given me support I can never repay.

Lastly, I would like to thank the veterans themselves, who have not just given me their remarkable stories, but who also offered their encouragement and friendship over so many years.

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