Boy Soldiers of the Great War (21 page)

The
Times
correspondent continued:

We may admire the enthusiasm and dash of youth, but war is not all battles, which are, indeed, but incidents of comparatively infrequent occurrence in what is often only a long tale of exhausting marches, exposure, and hardships. It is these which boys are little fitted to undergo, and it is these to which their physical strength and moral endurance will both alike succumb … If our authorities are labouring under the impression that boys of fifteen
can stand campaigning under modern conditions, they will, to their cost, find out their mistake.

Clearly the army had never wanted undernourished, poor-sighted weaklings, boys who would never reach a level of fitness that would allow them to proceed overseas or who would require such work to improve their physique that it would be nothing short of madness to take them. The problem was that the authorities were increasingly malleable when it came to accepting lads who were willing, and at least
tolerably
fit and able, at which time age was of almost secondary concern.

The army’s attitude to the quality of recruits and their worth was reflected in the wider society, often in national newspapers such as
The Times
but also in local newspapers and pamphlets. In August 1915, for example, a short piece appeared in the magazine of Boots the Chemist,
Boots Comrades in Khaki
, under the title ‘Juvenile Discharged’:

One of our members has regretfully returned to civilian life. Originally he left Cheltenham without his father’s consent to join the Royal Flying Corps, and though only 16 years of age was ordered over to France … He wrote to wish his father ‘Goodbye.’ The father, sensibly enough, did not respond with ‘Good Luck,’ but engaged a solicitor to procure the boy’s discharge from the army, which he should never have entered. The youth has been inoculated twice, and vaccinated once. During his futile term with the colours he has cost the country as much for clothing, maintenance, training, and transport as a man of serviceable age.

The cost to the nation of discharging such boys was considerable, but this was the same magazine that only a few months before had unequivocally praised the actions of another former employee, Richard Pomfret, a fifteen-year-old private in the 2nd Coldstream Guards and former porter at the Accrington Branch
of the chemist, who had been described as having ‘a giant heart in a giant body’. Pomfret had been killed in action on his sixteenth birthday, exactly two weeks after landing in France.

The full significance of the conflict dawned slowly on many parents, a fact highlighted by the number who accepted, albeit reluctantly, the enlistment of their sons. They did not encourage fraudulent enlistment, except in a few cases, but chose instead to accept the situation on the basis that the war would be over quickly and in the meantime it would do the lads good to have some fresh air and exercise.

The reality of war undermined such composure and parents increasingly sought not only to withdraw their sons from the Western Front but to stop them from going in the first place. This endeavour became more pronounced as the army began placing greater emphasis on the need for fresh reinforcements after the major engagements of March, April and May, and markedly after the heavy fighting of September and October 1915. The work of MPs like Markham, and the spreading knowledge amongst parents that it was possible and legal to halt their sons’ progression to the front, stiffened their resolve to get them home.

Senior army officers were going to get grumpy. Letters were arriving on the desks of battalion commanders, if not in a flood, then in a steady trickle. And nothing was more annoying than to have to pull a boy from the ranks as he completed his training. Overseas service was just around the corner and news that the unit was about to be sent abroad triggered a flurry of parental letters such as that sent by Mrs Ethel Andrews. ‘As my son is up for four days leave, I have come to the conclusion that he is about to go to France. I am enclosing his birth certificate to show that he is under age.’ Her son, Private Alfred Andrews, was aged sixteen and as a consequence he was withdrawn from the draft.

Another boy, Rifleman Albert Holden, King’s Royal Rifle Corps, had enlisted at the age of fifteen without his mother’s consent though not without her knowledge. He had served six
months before his mother came forward. ‘I should have given his age before, but I always thought he would remain here, but now I find they are sending them abroad and I cannot bear it … Mrs A Holden.’ Private Holden’s progress to France was also abruptly halted.

Letters such as these caused consternation amongst officers such as Colonel William Watts, who commanded the 20th battalion The Welch Regiment. In a note to his superiors dated 17 November 1915, he made his views abundantly clear:

There are about 15 members of my Battalion who have been serving about
six months
– and their parents have now discovered
after that period of training
that they are under age of 18.

I have no doubt there are many others in the same position but they have not made any application for discharge.

I am of an opinion such cases are of a very great expense to the country – and if these men get their discharge, merely on asking for it, the nuisance will not abate, but increase.

Watts’ frustration was evident in the case of a boy named Grainger. His mother had written asking for his release and supplying the usual documentary evidence as to age. Grainger should have been released straightaway, but by January 1916 he was still with the battalion, as official correspondence reveals, and Colonel Watts was gently chided for his delay in carrying out the order to discharge the boy. Colonel Watts replied that Grainger had not been released because it had proved difficult to find the boy who, as it turned out, had enlisted under the name of Edward Walters, another administrative complication the colonel could well have done without.

The 6th Battalion Worcester Regiment, a reserve battalion, was in a similar pickle. A travelling medical board had been sent to the unit in early January 1916, inspecting those lads deemed ‘immature’. It had discovered a total of eighty-nine boys of whom
just seventeen were aged eighteen or over while the remainder were aged seventeen or under and so were at least a year, perhaps two years, off being sent on active service. The solution, born of clear annoyance, was to enlist them into the Navy where recruits could be taken on as young as fourteen, and where a lad could legitimately be sent on active service at sixteen. Permission to make this transfer was given in a War Office letter dated 10 October 1915, suggesting also that a Naval Recruiting Officer be on hand ‘at the time they are discharged, so that the man may be enlisted on the spot’.

As a sign of the army’s official disapproval of fraudulent enlistment, regulations were imposed maintaining that no underage soldier was to be released until he was ‘in possession of sufficient money to defray the cost of his journey home’. That was all well and good, but the army was cutting off its nose to spite its face. A lad under seventeen would only cost the army further sums in training, accommodation and food, on top of the necessary vaccinations and inoculations. What was the point of keeping him until he had been paid enough money to get himself home, other than to serve as an exemplary warning to other would-be underage recruits?

On 15 September 1915, a letter was received by the commanding officer of the 13th Scottish Rifles ordering him to discharge No. 20187 Private Thomas Bambrick who had turned sixteen two weeks before. The CO was reminded of the regulations as amended by Army Order 402: Bambrick would stay put until he had enough money to get home. The problem was that Bambrick was not anywhere near home; he was at Maida Barracks, Aldershot and the cost of getting him home to Glasgow was thirty-six shillings, five weeks’ wages if nothing was deducted for such things as breakages or for allowances paid to his family.

News of the delay infuriated Bambrick’s parents who pointed out that the army had taken their son south: ‘You took him to
Aldershot,’ wrote Mr Bambrick, ‘and you will surely have to bring him back again.’ Mrs Bambrick was already angry. Her son’s allotment to his mother had been stopped on the discovery of his age, and the book in which each week’s allotment was noted had been withdrawn by the paymaster in Hamilton, Scotland. As Bambrick was still being paid, the money was presumably being set aside to pay for his ticket home.

I have kept all the correspondence between us and as sure as I don’t get a satisfactory answer to this I will write direct to Headquarters in London where I will surely get satisfaction. In conclusion there will not be a penny paid for my son’s return. You are responsible for his return home to Sydney Street and I will expect him soon. Yours truly [Mr] W Bambrick.

Major Thompson, Adjutant of the 13th Scottish Rifles, wrote to the authorities asking if he could issue a free railway warrant ‘forthwith’ in order to get the boy off his hands, but his request was refused; regulations were to be obeyed and common sense ignored.

From detailed examination of the surviving records, it is certain that the army discharged or held back more underage boys than it ever sent overseas, and to an unquantifiable but significant extent this was the result of appeals, either polite or vociferous, from parents.

Yet, to be fair to the army, how was it to know for certain that Private Joe Bloggs had lied on his enlistment papers, six or perhaps twelve months before? When Nellie Kings, distraught that her son had gone to France aged sixteen, wrote to the War Office, she added revealingly, ‘We naturally thought so young a lad would be kept for home service, even though in build and health he has the appearance of a man.’ Her son had enlisted in May 1915 and had gone to the firing line, to the family’s ‘utter astonishment and grief’.

Even so, it is sometimes hard to imagine how similar cases of a well-built but underage boy being sent overseas did not receive closer scrutiny regardless of respectable height and an adequate chest measurement. Private Edward Barnett was of ‘good’ physical development according to his enlistment papers and was sent out with a draft of men to join the 20th Manchester Regiment in December 1915. He lasted nearly four months on the Western Front before he was brought home. He was born on 17 February 1902 and was therefore only thirteen when he went overseas.

In spite of the efforts of Sir Arthur Markham and the parents he supported, young lads were still enlisting, being sent overseas and facing the horrors of trench life; at no time on the Western Front was their youth and their courage more poignantly shown than, a month later, in one of the major battles of the war, the offensive at Loos.

7
The Attack

JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH
PRAY FOR HIM
AMEN

7937 Private Stephen Pepler
11th Royal Fusiliers

Killed in Action 1 September 1915, aged 17

It was generally rumour that first alerted soldiers to a forthcoming attack. Men looked for signs: subtle changes in routine, a longer time in rest, a greater emphasis on battle training, perhaps better food. Confirmation came when they were taken to see a battle plan laid out in model form, showing natural features, trench lines and machine-gun positions. They might not know when the battle would take place, but they knew it was coming. A visit from the brigadier to announce the attack would coincide with more rigorous training and orders for the men to pay special attention to cleaning rifles and ammunition, while specialists such as bombers, signalmen and machine-gunners ensured that all their equipment was in full working order.

The reaction to such news was usually silence and numbness. Most men could not help looking round, knowing that, regardless of success or failure, this would be the end for someone. Private fears grew: a number always believed that they could never face the bayonet, others that they would not be able to go over the top.
All feared the prospect of being mortally wounded, stranded in pain and alone in no-man’s-land.

Inevitably, the incidence of sickness grew in the day or two before the attack, but the medical officer, attuned to every ploy in the book, gave most men short shrift, prescribing ‘M & D’ – medicine and duty. The medicine was usually no more than a pill taken from one of the squared-off and numbered compartments in his medical box. The No. 9 pill, a very mild laxative, was used as a virtual placebo, and the men knew that there was no escape on ‘medical grounds’.

Before going up to the line, there was a chance to receive Holy Communion, then to fill in a field service postcard or, if they were very fortunate, write a letter home using one of the army’s ‘green envelopes’. These allowed the correspondent the right, on his honour, to send a personal letter with the knowledge that his own platoon officer would not censor the contents. Addresses would be exchanged, if they had not been already, with friends who would write in the event of one of their number being killed. Battle order was commanded, which entailed the men handing in their large packs and greatcoats to the quartermaster, carrying only their small haversacks into action. Two days’ rations were handed out, along with extra ammunition and bombs as well as picks or shovels that could be used to dig in after an advance. Private business was attended to. Cash was pooled to keep it from the battlefield scavengers who searched the pockets of the dead. The survivors would divide the spoils between them, not as a reward for coming through unscathed, but as a gift from the dead and wounded, a departing commiseration for those whose war was set to continue.

Waiting to go into action was harrowing for everyone, but for boy soldiers there was an extra dimension to the tension that was hard to ignore. It tantalized the boy, gnawing away in the recesses of his mind, offering hope, yet promising long-term guilt: it was the chance to escape the carnage by using his age.