Read Boy Soldiers of the Great War Online
Authors: Richard van Emden
Terribly disappointed, George walked home.
I told my father what had happened. He said, ‘Take your jacket off and expand your chest.’ He made me expand my chest a few times, then measured it with a tape. He said, ‘What’s that doctor talking about? You’ve got a 35-inch chest. You should have been taken in. Go down and tell him.’
Two days later, George returned, puffed out his chest, and passed.
There was another reason for superficial questioning. Every recruiting sergeant was paid two shillings and sixpence (about £6 in today’s money) for each man attested into the infantry, as was the medical officer, frequently a civilian specifically employed for this task. As a result, the standard of probity could vary greatly from one office to another, and those rejected frequently discovered it was merely a question of turning up elsewhere to be accepted.
Considerable sums could be made by less scrupulous recruitment staff, but that would require a quick throughput, passing all but the palpably decrepit. The pre-war fears of the military authorities that the process of recruitment was subject to the (in) discretion of the enlistment sergeant were once again realized. Men were being passed, only to be rejected by the army once they reached their depots for training. By October, the army had reduced the reward to one shilling and there were calls to force
those who were paid to return the fee if the recruit should subsequently be discharged as medically unfit. Doctors too required reining in and in December 1914 orders were issued that no doctor should process more than forty men a day, or eight men in one hour. Furthermore, all were ordered to spend no less than seven minutes on a recruit so ensuring each received a proper medical examination.
It would be unfair to point the finger at recruiting sergeants and officers as somehow being more immoral about the enlistment of underage boys than anyone else. Recruiting sergeants came in all guises, and some of those who colluded in the enlistment of underage boys did so in order not to deprive them of their chance for adventure.
In the last resort, the onus on telling the truth was placed squarely on the shoulders of the recruit and he signed to that effect. Even so, the flaws in the whole process were evident for all to see. On both sides of the recruitment table there was room to bend the rules and, with no identification being required, abuse was prevalent. The enlistment forms were set up to pursue the question of how fit a boy was to serve, less whether he was old enough. The boy was asked, ‘What is your age?’ but the form filled in by the doctor asked for a medical opinion as to the
apparent
age, in other words, whether the boy’s physical development was such that he would make an efficient soldier. As one MP was later to point out, nowhere was there room for the medical officer to state that he believed the boy to be actually under age.
Although fraudulent enlistment carried the threat of prosecution, there is scant evidence of military law being used against a soldier who made a ‘mis-statement as to age’. In a question later raised in the Commons, in April 1916, one MP asked pointedly whether any boy had been court-martialled for the offence; in reply, the Undersecretary of State for War conceded that no such trial had taken place.
The MP may have been referring to a General Court Martial, for during the course of the war around 2,000 other ranks were tried by the lesser District Courts Martial for the crime of fraudulent enlistment and re-enlisting after discharge. However, how many were underage soldiers is not recorded. One fifteen-year-old boy who was discharged only to be caught again after re-enlisting was punished, the following note being written on to his service record: ‘Committed crime – Fraudulent enlistment – trial disposed of but placed under stoppages of pay etc as if he had been convicted by D.C.M.’ Loss of pay was hardly a serious rap over the knuckles for a boy who had twice fraudulently enlisted. In December 1915 another underage soldier, Private John Arnold from London, was awarded a District Court Martial and forty-two days’ detention in Wandsworth Detention Barracks for giving ‘false answers on attestation’. However, no evidence has been discovered that any recruitment officer or sergeant was prosecuted for knowingly enlisting such boys.
The collusion that enabled boys to enlist in such numbers was endemic, not just in recruitment offices but in family homes up and down the country. It included Members of Parliament, as well as miners and mill workers. It included lord mayors, headmasters of schools and governors of borstals as well as mothers and fathers, and, most of all, the boys themselves.
Any individual who sanctioned the enlistment of an underage boy was complicit in the act, although the level of involvement varied greatly. Sixteen-year-old Charles Leatherland was working for Birmingham Corporation.
I told my chief I intended to join the army. He said such a thing was impossible. I was too young. I insisted … My chief told the alderman how ridiculous the whole idea was. But dear old bearded Alderman Lucas saved me. He said, ‘I certainly would have refused to grant permission but tomorrow night I am addressing a recruiting meeting in the Town Hall and I cannot very well do that if I
say no to you.’ So off I went to the recruiting office. The Medical Officer ran his tape over me, looked rather hesitant, turned to the Medical Sergeant and said, ‘He looks rather skinny for nineteen.’ But fortune came to my aid again. I recognized the sergeant as the foreman at one of our corporation depots. He rose to the occasion wonderfully. ‘That’s so, sir,’ he said, ‘but these ginger-headed lads soon fill out by the time they are twenty.’
The response of parents to the enlistment of their offspring varied widely. Some encouraged their service; indeed, they went out of their way to facilitate it as George Pollard’s father had done, while others were furious, and some were bewildered and shocked. Boys could probably guess the reaction of their parents, or simply chose not to tell them that they intended to join up, knowing that permission would probably be refused. A small proportion enlisted without giving their parents a second thought, like Frank Lindley.
And not all parents agreed with each other. The attitude of fathers was generally more robust than that of their wives. In a world in which male and female roles in the family were clearly delineated, the pressure on men and boys to live up to their status was intense. When Dick Trafford returned home after enlisting:
I told my mother what was happening, that I had joined up, and of course my mother played hell because I’d no right joining up at my age and she was going to stop me, but my father said, ‘Don’t interfere. Let him go if he wants to.’
Horace Calvert had a similar experience, when he joined a territorial battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment.
I went home and Father said, ‘Where have you been?’ so I told him I’d joined the army and after a pause he said, ‘Well, you’ve made your bed, that’s it.’ There were tears from my mother but
I said I think I’d like it. I told them not to try and get me out, because if they did I’d probably go and join up elsewhere.
What happened to those boys whose ambition to enlist outstripped their ability to convince? Not every recruitment sergeant was guilty of turning a blind eye and not every medical officer waved through fit but underage lads who were willing to serve.
By and large the boys who failed to get in returned to civilian life, perhaps bent on having another go the following year. Yet some adults felt that such a surge of enthusiasm should not be allowed to dissipate and moves were made to harness and organize this collective will, to give the lads a frisson of military standing and a modicum of training. In Newcastle Upon Tyne, for example, several town councillors and moth-balled former soldiers, all well beyond service age themselves, got together to form the Junior Training League, directing lads to attend a meeting at the town hall assembly room.
Basil Peacock was one of the sixteen-year-olds who turned up and had to fight his way into the building. A diminutive figure for his age, he knew he would never be accepted into the army proper, but he felt envious. ‘I think it was the sight of schoolfellows in uniform which made me determined to wear one too,’ he acknowledged. Basil also had two brothers in the forces and he was not about to sit back and do nothing; the proposed Junior Training League was perfect.
The response was astounding, almost comic, and the elderly founders were engulfed in a seething mob of boys clamouring to join. When I arrived, there were hundreds inside and hundreds more fighting to get in. It was like a modern students’ demo, and the councillors had to take refuge on a high platform. The noise in the hall was terrific until an old gentleman in the uniform of a reserve colonel came onto the stage and with lungs of brass shouted, ‘Boys, if you want to be soldiers, the first thing you must learn is who is boss …’
The Training League soon got under way, and we were given a piece of red, white and blue cord to wear in the shoulder-seam of our jackets to indicate membership. It was the first quasi-military badge that I acquired, and it gave me more pride than real ones did later … My parents were unenthusiastic about the Junior Training League but relieved to find that I had taken no military obligations; they probably thought that this occupation would take the fidgets out of me …
There was another organization that had all the trappings of the army even if it was somewhat on its fringes. It was the Forage Department of the Army Service Corps and it employed thousands of boys for home service only. Forage was absolutely vital to the prosecution of the war, with horses and mules providing the power to move guns and supplies around the battlefield, and thousands of thoroughbred horses in the cavalry. More tons of forage were shipped to France than tons of ammunition. Cheap and willing labour in Britain was badly needed: boys who joined were subject to military law and would be employed under older men to cut and bail hay, receiving the basic wage of a labourer plus extra money for every ton of forage bailed. Indeed, wages were higher than for those serving overseas but this discrepancy was not significant for no one working for the Forage Department received any lodging, ration or separation allowances, nor would they be entitled to an army pension and they could be dismissed at short notice. The boys employed would even have to pay for their own army uniform, the cost of which would be taken from their wages in instalments. Nevertheless it was a khaki uniform like any other and that counted for an awful lot.
At the time, boys did not always fully understand their own motives for enlisting, but with hindsight they saw more clearly the pressures both from society and from the attitudes of their contemporaries that had weighed on them. Seventy years after
he enlisted at seventeen, Len Thomas wrote a letter in which he looked again at his reasons for joining up.
I have read many accounts of the great rush to join the armed forces in 1914, and my contact with numerous men told me that the great majority, apart from their patriotism, found it a way to escape from the terrible working conditions they were undergoing. To many families this was the way to affluence, with the wife receiving allowances for self and children and no husband to feed and clothe, so far more shillings in the purse. A labourer’s average wage was £1 per week. I was a copyholder on the
Daily Dispatch
at 18 shillings a week. A Royal Garrison Artillery gunner’s pay was one shilling and tuppence a day, 8/2d a week to squander on myself.
Many modern books contain quite a few inaccuracies on the 1914–1918 war and about the British Expeditionary Force in France. One particular phrase used, also by the media, is that ‘These brave men WILLINGLY gave their lives to save their country from German domination and the well-being of future posterities.’ What a ridiculous myth. The last thought of those who joined Kitchener’s Army was that they had joined to be killed. I’ll state that … the first priority of all up the line was SURVIVAL. Mine was and I never met anyone who was willing to ‘Go West’.
O SO YOUNG & YET SO BRAVE
24444 Private James Rathband
9th Royal Dublin Fusiliers
Killed in Action 9 September 1916, aged 16
Taking the King’s shilling had been the easy part for seventeen-year-old Vic Cole and his sixteen-year-old friend George Pulley. It had been their first and, as it turned out, their last recruitment rally, buoyed up as they were by rousing speeches and praised for their indomitable spirit.
We waited in that drill-hall for some time until all had undergone the formalities of enlistment, then found ourselves sharply ordered outside into the sunlit street and lined up into two ranks by a very smart khaki-clad corporal of the West Kents, whose exceedingly pleasant and friendly manner gave us the optimistic but mistaken impression that life in the army was not so bad after all.
We numbered down, formed fours quite creditably and marched en route for Bromley Station, where, having dispersed about the platform to wait for the train for Maidstone, we listened to a moving speech by His Worship the Mayor, who, addressing us as ‘Men of Bromley’, wished us all the best of luck and a safe return.
The jovial nature of the recruitment process and the general bonhomie masked the fact that the army simply did not
have the capacity to take into its ranks the numbers now joining.
Fifteen-year-old Horace Calvert, who had enlisted in Bradford, was surprised at the lack of organization. He had a boyish ideal about how the army should operate, and the reality was somewhat sobering.
They didn’t know what to do with us at the barracks. Parade would be at 9.30 or 10 o’clock. You’d finish after lunch. There were so many men that there was hardly any room for drilling on the square. Form fours, left turn, about turn; there were no rifles at this time.