Boy Soldiers of the Great War (49 page)

These figures reveal three significant details:

1. That the rush of boys to enlist was not necessarily greater in 1915 than it was in 1914, but that the examination of recruits was tighter in 1914, that is, many boys clearly under age were turned away when so many willing men stood in the queue to enlist.

2. That as a result of falling numbers volunteering to enlist in 1915, recruitment became more urgent and therefore far less
discerning as recruiters came out from behind their desks to chivvy boys into the army.

3. That civilian registration and subsequent conscription quickly cut the numbers of underage lads able to enlist. It is noticeable that around 30 per cent of all volunteers post January 1916 came from Ireland where the day of National Registration (15 August 1915) had not applied. Interestingly not a single volunteer, in my sample, came from Ireland to England to enlist in the two months after the Easter Uprising of April 1916.

Underage recruits by month:

Although the sample of 1,000 underage volunteers is small, their recruitment month by month resembles closely the ebb and flow in the national recruitment of all volunteers. The one anomaly is July and August 1915 when the total number of volunteers was almost identical at 95,413 and 95,980 respectively and yet the number of underage volunteers increased by almost 30 per cent, owing to the start of school holidays and the increasing pressure on recruiters to find volunteers.

As the number of civilians stepping forward to volunteer fell dramatically from early 1915 (156,000 enlisted in January, 88,000 in February), so boys helped fill the breach. These lads were supported not only by overzealous recruiters but by medical officers who either turned a blind eye or assumed that a poor physical specimen was likely to develop under the tutelage and feeding of the army. It appears that there was very little effort made to discipline the most lax and venal of these men, who were still receiving a bounty for every recruit, and only where an enlistment was subsequently deemed preposterous was there any attempt to ask why the lad in question had been signed up. A fifth of boys were discharged after less than a month’s service, and almost half of these during the first fortnight. In my sample of 1,000 boys, thirty-three did not even last a hundred hours in uniform, having been rejected almost as soon as they reached the depot for training.

Boys who enlisted under age came from every corner of the United Kingdom and from a myriad of largely menial jobs. Of those I identified as later serving abroad, 216 stated their occupation prior to enlistment: fifty were labourers or farm servants, twenty-two were clerks, twelve were miners, twelve assistants (often in a shop). There were apprentices, footmen, bookbinders, carters, porters; lads who worked in cotton mills and bakeries, post offices and butchers. There was one lad who described his profession as a dental student and one who claimed to be a scavenger.

On enlistment, boys either chose to lie about their age or were cajoled into doing so. Recruiting sergeants must have been aware of the number claiming to be nineteen exactly, or perhaps nineteen and one month to add a sliver of authenticity to their declaration. Of all those claiming their age to be nineteen or over, 37 per cent plumped for nineteen exactly, 15 per cent chose nineteen and one month, 8 per cent decided on nineteen and two months, leaving 40 per cent to pick any other, greater age. Very few ever attempted to use outrageous bluster, such as claiming to be aged twenty or over. One exception was James Rowan, who claimed to be twenty and two months when aged sixteen and two months. Yet his was not the greatest differential between stated and true age. This accolade goes to Edward Barnett, who was nearly five years and nine months younger than his stated age on enlistment. It is worth noting at this point that in my sample not one boy who served overseas reached his stated age before embarkation, giving the strong impression that the army either discharged those under age and certified as such, or sent them overseas: relatively few were held to serve at home if they were not eligible to go abroad in the foreseeable future.

When it came to physical measurements, the underage soldiers’ statistics were remarkably close to the minimum required to enlist. Of those who would serve abroad, the averages were as follows:

Chest 33.3 inches

Height 63 inches (five foot three)

Weight 120.2lbs (eight stone eight pounds)

However, the differential between some of the best built and the weakest framed lads who joined was considerable. There were a number of boys who were giants for their age, like fourteen-year-old Private Harry Aspinall, who stood five foot eleven inches tall and had an impressive thirty-eight-inch chest measurement, and lads who were weaklings, such as Private William Bain who stood at five foot two on enlistment and weighed not a pound over seven stone.

Overall it is clear that the majority of underage soldiers, perhaps in the order of 65–75 per cent, did not succeed in going abroad at all because their true age was either revealed or suspected. There is no doubt that some boys were sent overseas even if their youth was known, either because they themselves wanted to go and were adjudged physically capable, or because a colonel, in his annoyance or frustration, decided that the declared age was what mattered regardless of the empirical evidence before his eyes. Those in my sample who enlisted after 4th August 1914 and who served overseas, embarked in one of the following years:

The length of training received by these boys varied considerably. Of the 251 boys who served overseas, only seventeen received more than a year’s training, with the average receiving a few days short of seven months. It is interesting to note that 132 had between one and six months’ training, a figure that includes fourteen who received fewer than eight weeks’ training and a further fifty-four who were given between three and four months’ instruction before departure.

These boys were not, in the main, original recruits to Kitchener’s Army. Lord Kitchener wished to keep his new force as an army, not used piece-meal in action. His army would arrive on the front as a complete new force, although circumstances dictated that some divisions would begin arriving on the Western Front from mid-1915. Nevertheless, the desire to keep this force together ensured that the majority of Kitchener’s Army received at least a year’s training.

A few of the boys in the sample did join those Kitchener battalions raised later in the war, such as the 15th Hampshire Regiment raised in April 1915, or the 11th Royal West Kent Regiment raised in May 1915, by the Mayors of Portsmouth and Lewisham respectively. Rather more lads headed off to the territorials, which traditionally recruited at seventeen and which, as noted, often struggled to raise the numbers required for overseas service. However, most boys were simply sent out as reinforcements, usually to the regular and territorial battalions that took heavy losses at the front in 1914 and 1915, and before the arrival of most divisions of Kitchener’s Army.

The majority of the lads received sufficient training to go overseas although, once there, whether they were able to cope with the circumstances was quite a different matter. In particular, as winter drew near, many succumbed to the intense cold. Of the records examined, it is noticeable that 47 per cent did not last longer than three months from the moment they touched foreign soil to the moment of their departure. A small number of these would have returned owing to injury but most were pulled out either because a parent reclaimed them, or the evidence on the ground proved they could not manage. Out of 240 whose length of stay could be ascertained, only five lasted longer than a year: overall the average sojourn was just over four months. In so many cases these young lads, who had dreamed of serving their country in time of war, were quickly disabused of their adventurous, romantic thoughts, by the extraordinary and gruelling conditions of the Western Front.

Plate Section

Private Walter Williams enlisted in the 8th Northumberland Fusiliers aged sixteen. He served on the Somme in 1916 at seventeen and was wounded in September 1918. The bottom image was taken after just two years’ service at the front; the strain of war is etched on his face.

Alfred Anderson
(front row, arms folded)
on summer camp with the Territorials just days before war broke out. To his right are his friends Jim Ballantyne and John McKenzie. All three boys went to France at the end of October 1914. Alfred was badly wounded in the neck in 1916 and John also survived the war, but Jim was killed.

Father and son pose for a picture during the patriotic pre-war years. The son has all the trappings of a pukka soldier, making Boy Service his likely future.