Boy Soldiers of the Great War (17 page)

Unlike the enlistment papers that other ranks signed, an ‘Application for Appointment to a Temporary Commission in the
Regular Army for the period of the War’ had to be countersigned by the parents of the applicant if he was under the age of twenty-one, and then by at least one responsible person who could claim knowledge of the individual for at least four years. He would then certify to the good moral character of the boy in question. In theory, this would protect the army from underage enlistment among its officer corps, but in practice it failed to do so.

One determined boy, Reginald Battersby, may have been vouched for by two ‘responsible persons’ but he would still make it to France while well under age. Reginald was born in February 1900 and, after the death of his mother on the outbreak of war, had enlisted in the Manchester Regiment. His relationship with his father, Walter Battersby, was strained, but his father’s shock at his son’s enlistment was reserved more for the fact that he had enlisted as a private than that he had enlisted at all. Walter was an influential man and his contacts were very good. Making enquiries, he was able to obtain a commission for his son and, although Reginald had to add four years and one month to his age, this did not appear to affect his chances of becoming an officer. Signing his application for a temporary commission and certifying to his good moral character were not only the headmaster of his grammar school, but the Lord Mayor of Manchester, Daniel McCabe. McCabe professed to knowing Reginald since birth and so, presumably, must have known his true age.

Once an officer was seen as being of the right calibre, commission papers were of secondary importance. Papers lodged at The National Archives reveal an applicant who changed his date of birth, on ‘remembering’ his correct age. Robert Batson could not decide whether his date of birth was 9 June 1897 or 1899, while in another glaring example, a date of birth, written in a completely different hand, was added only once the rest of the form had been filled in and countersigned.

Digby Cleaver from Hove in Sussex was just seventeen when he applied to join the RFC in August 1915. His application for a
commission was completed with the exception of his age, which Digby, for his own reasons, omitted. His father, Howard Cleaver, countersigned that the information given by his son was correct on 20 August, the same day that a friend of the family, a lieutenant colonel of the RAMC, signed as to the applicant’s good moral character. Only later, on 30 August, was Digby’s age added to the application by an officer of the RFC. Whatever the reason for Digby’s omitting his date of birth, clearly age was an issue of some kind.

Yet the award for most outstanding commission papers must go to Philip Lister. This boy remains something of an enigma. He had no clear links to the army and was the only son of widow Kathleen Davidson, and yet he was accepted for a commission in January 1915 by Lieutenant Colonel Pollock, commanding the 10th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Lister’s application for a commission was so poorly executed, his handwriting so infantile, as to beggar belief, and it is remarkable that his paperwork passed even cursory scrutiny. His date of birth was given as 30 July 1895 although it is known that he was born four years later, in 1899.

The problem with commission papers was the question of who was technically certifying what. The boy signed the statement he had given, including his age, ‘to be correct’ and it was then countersigned by his father or mother.

The responsible person who also signed the paperwork would then add his details. In Philip Lister’s case, A.A. Bull, a clerk in holy orders, living at the vicarage in Waltham St Lawrence, confirmed the boy’s good character. Another boy, Ernest Lancaster, had his moral character certified by a Justice of the Peace for Portsmouth, while James Eason, Mayor of Grimsby, signed on behalf of John Stream.

Were these men signing simply to guarantee the boy’s good moral character or were they also signing to guarantee the accuracy of the information given on the application form? It is unclear.
However, such ambiguity could help assuage the guilt that a clerk in holy orders might feel if he knew the boy in question was only fifteen years old. It is perhaps a moot point, but if a boy added four years to his actual age, would that not negate somewhat the notion of his good moral character?

For those whose progression to officer status was a little more formal than simple influence, there was a selection board to be faced. In Parliament, an MP and retired army officer who had sat on many boards regaled the House of Commons with stories of how they were bombarded with boys eager for a commission.

Over and over again young fellows have come forward for commissions. They have been too young, and we have told them so. We have rejected them, and told them to come again in six months’ time. They have pressed us, urged us, almost beseeched us to take them. That is not a single experience. It has occurred over and over again. I have had before me something like 300 or 400 of these young men. It is difficult sometimes to resist their appeals. They are well developed, they are keen upon work, and, instead of accepting them, you are going against their wishes.

Another MP, Colonel Greig, described the difficulties that commanding officers faced. They were confronted by

the eagerness, heroism, and courage of these youngsters, who sometimes have the connivance of their parents in concealing their age. Personally, I had a somewhat remarkable experience of this. It was the case of a relative of a distinguished Member of this House. The boy turned out to be seventeen years of age. His father communicated with me, expressing a desire that he should go in for some other course of military training. I said to the father that I supposed it was not with his connivance that the boy had joined, but he replied that it had been done with his connivance, as he thought it was a proper and useful thing for the youngster.

The enthusiasm of these youngsters to see active service cannot be overestimated. Charles Carrington was one who chopped and changed not just battalions but ranks in his anxiety to get to France. He had originally sought a commission, but his keen interest was not reciprocated by the authorities and he had enlisted as a private in the Birmingham Pals. Once in the army, Charles and those around him became absorbed by one thought: when would they leave for France?

Everyone agreed that proper training was essential, but with no action on the horizon, Charles’s friends began to desert, turning up in other regiments in the hope of an earlier date of embarkation. Their actions inspired Charles, not to desert, but to try once more for a commission, though his thought processes appear mind-boggling today:

On the whole, the best way to jump the queue for France was to get yourself selected for an officer’s commission, since young officers had the heaviest casualties and the highest replacement rate.

Displaying remarkable sangfroid, he contacted an influential uncle ‘to pull strings’ and shortly afterwards he was offered a commission.

Charles Carrington’s logic was undoubtedly correct but, as his new battalion had yet to leave for France, it was unlikely to apply in his case. Charles Douie, another young subaltern, was in a similar position. He had suffered gut-wrenching disappointment when he was designated too young for overseas service with his battalion, the 1st Dorsets.

My name had been high in the list of subalterns ready for service at the front, and I had just missed a draft for Cape Helles [Gallipoli]. The inexorable decree of the War Office in regard to age was brought to my notice and my name was removed.

The total rejection felt by those left behind was very real. In a moment of despondency, Douie looked for an alternative route abroad. Interestingly, his conclusions were diametrically opposed to those of Carrington:

For months I haunted the orderly room and, in my bitter disappointment and my sure expectation of the early termination of the war, contemplated the resignation of my commission and enlistment as a private soldier. I had observed that the affairs of the private soldier and more especially his age were not subjected to the same scrutiny as the affairs of the young officer. Birth certificates were not demanded.

The problem for young men such as Charles Douie and Charles Carrington stemmed from the recruitment criteria for ‘temporary commissions’. Many of those who had responded to the War Office appeal for applicants as young as seventeen were, within months, gazetted as second lieutenants in His Majesty’s forces. They naturally felt humiliated when they were struck off the list for overseas service because they were not the right age. Charles Carrington was typical of this new brand of officer who, just because of his youth, was left to kick his heels when the rest of the battalion sailed for France at the end of August 1915. His rejection had been particularly cruel. Just two days before embarkation, he was ordered before the commanding officer.

The colonel sent for me to say that in accordance with a regulation beyond his control I was to be left behind, even though he had given me a good ‘confidential report’. Well, I was still only eighteen years old, and didn’t look a year older, as I pretended to be. Anyone would have been disappointed but I was more than that; I was heartbroken … As my platoon waved their goodbyes, I felt finished, disgraced, and my war over.

Stuart Cloete had a very particular reason for being left behind and it was not directly connected with his age. Like Charles Carrington, he was due to sail with the regiment in August 1915 and, had he gone, would have taken part in the Battle of Loos the following month. The fact that he did not was due to an incident while he was sharing a billet with a more senior officer. The man made a pass at Stuart who in turn threatened him with a knife if he tried the move again. ‘He did not try again but had no love for me after that and, owing to his influence, I was left behind as being too young and incompetent to go with the battalion.’ If Stuart was right, then he had been left behind as a ‘punishment’, an interesting insight into attitudes of the time. His battalion was very badly mauled at Loos: if nothing else this officer had, as Stuart acknowledged, inadvertently saved his life.

Before Charles Carrington could go overseas, he was sent to Cannock Chase to a ‘young officers’ company’ and was indignant at his temporary reduction to the status of officer cadet.

My friends and I had one object only in view – to find a means of escape … we all pulled the strings we could get a grip on, with a fair measure of success, since the War Office was in considerable chaos. One of my friends overcalled his hand by appealing to a great-uncle whom he had never met, a very elderly field marshal, and received this reply or words to this effect: ‘Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood acknowledges receipt of a letter from 2nd Lieutenant So-and-So, and begs to inform him that he (the Field Marshal) spent many years at the War Office combating the baleful effects of private influence.’

In early 1915 the first temporary officers began to appear in France, sent out as drafts to replace those who had been killed or wounded and their obvious youth was noted: ‘In the streets of Havre one was struck with the boyish looks of the English officers, so different from the grave air of our more elderly French confrères,’
wrote Lieutenant Wilfrid Piercy, who saw at close hand the reinforcements, officers and men, as they stepped off the boat from England or marched through the town.

Our own boys are amongst the youngest: how many of them are below the age for Foreign Service it was wiser not to guess. In passing into our lines from those of the battalions recruited in the better districts of London, I have been struck anew by the simple immature expressions, the attitudes and bearing which mark the plasticity of minds still in the making.

In March 1915, two temporary officers, seventeen-year-old Lieutenant Willy Spencer, a boy from Highgate in London who was serving in D Company of the 2nd Wiltshire Regiment, and seventeen-year-old Second Lieutenant Maurice Beningfield, serving with the 1st Worcesters, were preparing to go over the top. Maurice already had some experience. In his enthusiasm to enlist in 1914, he had joined the Artists’ Rifles and had gone to France in late October. In February he was given a commission in the field.

Both men would be among the leading waves in the proposed battle for the village of Neuve Chapelle, due to start on 10 March and to be led by two regular divisions, the 7th and 8th. It was, in part, designed to show the French the offensive capabilities of her ally as well as to seize the heights of Aubers Ridge. At 7.30 a.m., a lightning bombardment of the German front line was undertaken, 3,000 shells being fired in thirty-five minutes before the troops went over. The attack along a three-kilometre front was initially a great success: as the troops stormed forward, they took the German front line easily and then piled on towards the village, which also fell into British hands.

Unfortunately, the difficulties of supply and coordination rapidly escalated, while German snipers, lodged in the buildings that had been overrun, began to pick off the British soldiers.

Willy Spencer had gone forward and was soon killed; his body
was lost. Maurice Beningfield had been more successful, leading his men across the first line of German trenches, but as he jumped on to the parapet of the second line, a machine gun was turned on the young officer and he was seen to be hit in the head and throat, falling into the flooded trench. A fellow officer and friend, Lieutenant Walter Whittle, attempted to find and retrieve Maurice’s body but failed. Walter was himself killed two days later. In the end neither body was found, and both are now commemorated on the Le Touret Memorial to the missing.

Another battalion that took part in the fighting was the 2nd Middlesex. This unit was badly cut up by machine guns firing from a moated farm, several officers being killed. In the aftermath, new drafts were sent out, including four officers, one of whom was seventeen-year-old Second Lieutenant Brian Lawrence. The draft joined the battalion on 20 March near Laventie, a village west of Lille. Brian had been educated at Wellington College and on the outbreak of war had won a place at the Royal Military College in Sandhurst, just days before his seventeenth birthday. He had been commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment in early January 1915.