Boy Soldiers of the Great War by Richard van Emden Read Free Book Online Page A

germans get it. I am a good shot with a revolver and would kill a good few of the germans. I am very strong and often win a fight with lads twice as big as myself. I want a uneform and a revolver and will give a good account of myself.
Please send an ancncer
Yours affectionately
Alfie Knight
    Far from ignoring the letter, Kitchener asked his private secretary to reply.
17 August 1914
Dear Sir
Lord Kitchener asks me to thank you for your letter, but he is afraid that you are not quite old enough to go to the front as a dispatch rider.
Yours truly
H. J. Creedy
Private Secretary
    Quite how many boys were willing to lie is difficult to ascertain. However, in a study undertaken on a surviving Company Roll Book belonging to E Company of the 16th Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, a statistical anomaly is evident. The book reveals that 21 per cent of all volunteers claimed to be nineteen, while fewer than 1 per cent were eighteen. This evidence is put into perspective when compared with other age groups: on average, each year broadly 7 or 8 per cent of those who enlisted were older than nineteen.
    The frequency with which boys gave their age as exactly nineteen should have alerted recruiting sergeants to the fact that there had either been the most remarkable explosion in the birth rate in 1895, or a number of boys were consistently giving the wrong age. Most boys, if they thought about it, were careful to use their day and month of birth and subtract one, two or three years as required; a very few, aware perhaps that boys were using the age of nineteen, boldly claimed to be twenty for greater authenticity.
    Inevitably, among the first to volunteer were those with few family ties, working in dreary dead-end jobs. These would-be recruits were likely to make a snap decision to join up, whereas men with steady jobs and a family to feed were more likely to ensure that their affairs were in order before offering themselves to the country.
    Seventeen-year-old John Laister was in just such a dead-end job and was one of the first to join up immediately on the outbreak of war, on 6 August. His motive for lying about his age was less military glory and more that he was bored and keen for a change of scenery – typical of unattached youth.
I worked at Oldbury Carriage Works as a fitter and turner from six in the morning until six at night, with a long walk to and from work. I was on my way home and I’m looking at the evening paper and there was a picture of men queuing up to join the army in James Watt Street in Birmingham. ‘I’d like to join the armybetter than slogging down at the Works for a few shillings a week,’ I thought, so without telling Mother I got my bike in the morning and went to enlist. I never bothered telling my employer what I was up to; I didn’t feel I owed them anything.
I had great difficulty in finding James Watt Street but I found an alleyway to park my bike and I went to get in the queue which was almost the length of the street. I almost gave up. I’d been going for about two hours to reach the building, one person going up a flight of stairs as another came out, before I was called to go up.
The sergeant major opened the door. ‘Come in.’ As soon as I got in, he says, ‘Take your clothes off.’ It wasn’t too warm and there were two doctors there in white coats and an officer sitting behind this table and they examined me and measured me. I was five foot one inch tall. I didn’t think I was so small. The officer looked up. ‘How old are you?’ ‘Nineteen, sir.’ ‘Are you sure you’re nineteen?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Well, I’ll tell you what. You come back here in about two years’ time and then perhaps you will have filled out.’
So I’m making for the door with tears in my eyes, and a corporal who was there said, ‘Half a minute’ and he went to the sergeant major and he whispered something, and he went in front of the officer, saluted and said, ‘Do you think he’ll fill out, sir?’