Boy Soldiers of the Great War (28 page)

He [Markham] said that we at the War Office had, in fact, employed these boys of fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen years of age, knowing them at the time to be of that age, and had deliberately sent them to the front. What are the real facts in these cases? Frankly, I regret them. I have told my Hon. Friend, both privately and officially in this House, that the War Office do not desire to recruit boys of that age, and that it has been done by overzealous recruiting officers who, of course, are rewarded for it. I regret
these circumstances, and I say that the colonels of these regiments, when they really become acquainted with the facts, ought to send these boys back to their parents. They are very often returned and discharged. In some cases they are not returned, because not only have these boys cost the country a certain amount of money, but they have been given training and uniforms, and in some cases these boys of sixteen, seventeen, and even fifteen years are very efficient soldiers.

Markham riposted:

Why not reduce the age; why not say quite definitely, that you will reduce the age?

Tennant replied:

The answer is that we do not want these boys. We do not want them because, in a large number of cases, they are not able to withstand all the hardships of active warfare, and they only fill our hospitals.

It was a powerful defence but within Tennant’s statement there was an admission that ran to the heart of Markham’s argument. Was it right to keep underage boys in France simply because they were deemed fit enough to stand the conditions, or should their age, regardless of fitness, preclude them from fighting? The Government line was clear. Officially they did not want underage soldiers, but those who had deceived the military authorities and were strong enough to survive were acceptable, provided that the boy was willing to continue fighting and the commanding officer was ready to have him in the line.

After this debate, Markham drew Curnock’s attention to his part in the debate: ‘I did not mince matters about the lying and deceit of the War Office,’ and asked for the journalist’s continued help.
Markham supported conscription first and foremost because it would help the cause of the underage soldier; Curnock supported Markham’s crusade because it would help the National Service League’s battle for the introduction of conscription.

In reality, Curnock’s help was hardly needed. So impassioned was Markham by his crusade that he simply was incapable of turning away fresh evidence of what he had firmly come to believe was a scandal of outrageous proportions. One case he raised on several occasions was that of John Flint, a local constituent from East Kirkby in Mansfield, and therefore one close to Markham’s heart.

In October 1915 Sir Arthur had asked the Undersecretary of State for War why John William Flint, No 19370, D Company, of the 11th Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters, had not been discharged from the army. The boy’s parents, on hearing that their son had enlisted, went immediately to Derby Barracks taking along a birth certificate that proved that John was only sixteen years of age, and asking for his discharge. The application was refused. Markham asked:

Will he say whether it is the policy of the War Office to refuse to discharge boys of sixteen years of age who have entered the army by making a false declaration of their age unknown to their parents?

Tennant replied that inquiries had been made into the case and that

it appeared that Private Flint should have been discharged in November 1914, when his father first made application. At that date when my Hon. Friend brought the case to my notice, namely in August last, Flint was serving Overseas, and instructions were sent explaining the case and asking that Flint should be sent home for discharge, if there were no good grounds to the contrary. May
I ask my Hon. Friend if he will abstain from founding general charges upon individual cases?

It seems doubtful that Markham genuinely believed that such actions were part of a wide conspiracy but, to a man who hated inefficiency and waste in business, such incidents when they occurred to a young boy were inexcusable.

Flint could at least be brought home. Another boy, Edward Bailey of the Monmouthshire Regiment, could not, for reasons Markham indignantly presented to the House. Edward’s father, Isaac, had three sons at the front and had written to the commanding officer of the battalion when he heard that his fourth son, Edward, was due to embark for France, despite being just seventeen years old. Isaac Bailey had received a reply, the details of which were now presented before MPs.

In February of this year, I received a letter from the commanding officer informing me that my son was to be transferred back to the reserve battalion on account of my objection. On 18th April he was sent to France, with the result that he was wounded on 22nd April and died on the 29th.

Markham thundered:

That was a case where an undertaking had been given that he should not be sent to the Front. What did the War Office say upon that case? I cannot use the language I should like to use, because I should not be allowed to use it. I will just read the words, and let the House put its own construction on the value of the word of the War Office. The letter is dated 10th October, 1915:

‘The Army Council desire me to say that every precaution is taken by them to prevent immature boys being sent to the front, and they desire me to express sympathy to you in the loss of your son – a keen young soldier.’

The father, not being satisfied in the case I have mentioned, writes again to the War Office. What do they say on the 22nd October?

‘It is a great pity your son was allowed to go out under age, as it is not the intention of the War Office that young men under nineteen should be taken. Mistakes will inevitably happen and in your son’s case efficient supervision does not appear to have been taken to ensure his not going out until he was nineteen.’

It may not have been the ‘intention’, but the War Office did not appear to rule out scenarios by which underage boys might go abroad. A War Office Instruction (No. 46), dated 6 September 1915, reminded army officers that

the age given by a soldier on enlistment is his official age, and battalion and company commanders should not make promises to parents that their sons will not be included in drafts for service overseas until they are 19 (real age).

Was this instruction anything more than an acknowledgement that mistakes happen and that it was better not to make promises that could be broken?

The existence of a National Register at least held out the hope that errors would be cut to a minimum. The results of the nationwide survey were to be supplied to the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, with access given to the coordinators of the Derby Scheme. All the information gathered was checked and corrected before the statistics were sorted and tabulated. The results were finally submitted in early October, to coincide with the launch of the Derby Scheme. The returns had shown that the total number of men aged between eighteen and forty-one was 5,011,441, of whom single men numbered 2,179,231, and married men 2,832,210. In all, 1.5 million men were ‘starred’, their civil work deemed at that
time too essential to the economy for them to be recruited. Of the remainder, at least half were found under the prevailing rules to be unfit for service, which left just short of 1.8 million men nominally available for the army. Three months before conscription was finally introduced, the British Government had the information it needed to mobilize the nation’s manhood for war, weeding out ‘slackers’ from desk jobs and thinning out workers not essential to war production.

Using this information, it was possible to send a letter explaining the scheme to every eligible man in the country, followed by a visit from an appointed canvasser who went from door to door enquiring about men who had not enlisted. Almost all men, except those who were ‘starred’, were chased and harried. This met with indifferent success, for men who were riled at being doorstepped now dug their heels in and refused to attest, while some actively sought work in munitions to escape the threat of compulsion. In early December, the Reverend Andrew Clark recorded the feelings of one canvasser:

Major W. Brown said that much against his will he had had to undertake the recruiting duty for Lord Derby’s Committee. It was ‘the most unpleasant job he ever took on, to recruit your neighbours’ sons, your neighbours’ men, your own men; but no one else would touch it.’ Not a single married man had expressed willingness to serve. Five unmarried men had assented.

News of canvassers’ heavy-handed tactics reached MPs, as did reports that young boys were being approached to enlist. On 18 November, Philip Snowden MP asked why, and by what authority, Lord Derby’s letter had been sent to boys under seventeen years of age. Why were such boys being canvassed and threatened with a summons before the local tribunal? Was this done, he asked, ‘with the knowledge and sanction of the War Office’?

Harold Tennant replied that if Lord Derby’s letter had been sent to boys under seventeen years of age, ‘this has been due either
to a mistake on the part of those sending out the letters, or to the fact that the boy gave his age as eighteen or older when signing the registration paper’.

Suspicions among MPs such as Snowden and Markham persisted. They felt that the lessons of the past few months had given them reason to suspect the Government’s motives, but their fears were probably unfounded. Undoubtedly, genuine mistakes were made, for it transpired that Lord Derby’s missive had been sent to Lord Kitchener himself as well as to a Cabinet minister, though both men had yet to be doorstepped by canvassers.

Voluntary enlistment was becoming decidedly less an act of free will and much more a case of resignation in the face of harassment and threat. Rumours circulated that men who did not attest and apply to be ‘starred’ could not expect the chance to make such an appeal if they were subsequently called up. As a result, believed the Reverend Andrew Clark, there had been something of a rush to attest among local farmers.

This is not voluntary recruiting, but compulsion in a dishonest form. The officer who attended at the council school on Wednesday evening this week said that, if men hung back, they would be hauled out with a rope round their neck. This is voluntary enlistment!

The rush to get ‘starred’ or to be registered as unfit for service brought forth a plethora of reasons for individuals seeking exemption. A Government report noted the more absurd responses given to canvassers. One man said he was suffering from ‘Fiscal Decay’, another from ‘various veighns’. A third stated that while he could not enlist, he might nevertheless ‘Sell new laid eggs to the Government at 3/- per dozen’. There were also those still keen to fight but whose physical restrictions made service problematic, including ‘a dwarf from Nottingham who had asked to be enlisted as a mascot’. Youth, too, were still keen to share the
national burden. ‘A boy of eighteen, rejected on account of bad teeth, had had all his teeth out and a new set put in,’ it was noted. The boy was still rejected because he had a twisted toe. To rectify the problem would require an operation. ‘This he agreed to, on the condition that he should have a certain guarantee of acceptance on convalescence. He was in hospital seven weeks … and has now joined the ranks.’

Humorous and spirit-lifting examples apart, the Derby Scheme still failed. Altogether, 840,000 single males attested and were placed on the Army Reserve, although just over a third of these were later rejected on medical grounds. Excluding those who were ‘starred’, over a million men had ignored the appeal altogether. Of those who were married, 1.35 million had also signed, around 65 per cent of those nominally available, most in the belief that they would not be called up for a long time.

By launching the Derby Scheme, the Government had signalled to the public that recruits were urgently required and there was a noticeable if brief increase in the numbers who enlisted directly into the forces, from a low of 71,000 in September to 113,000 in October and 121,000 in November. Thereafter the number dropped once more. Voluntary enlistment had shaken out of the population almost all those who were keen to go, as well as those who did not wish to fight but who had enlisted out of patriotic duty. The rest were deemed either to be in jobs vital to the economy, or unlikely ever to enlist voluntarily, no matter how great the threat to Britain’s security. Why should these men, it was argued, be allowed to enjoy the benefits of citizenship without being willing to share the costs? Conscription was the only alternative to this intractable problem and most people, reluctantly or not, accepted that it had to come.

Cecil Withers was one of the 121,000 recruits in November. Although aged only seventeen, he had felt the tangible pressure:

My four sisters used to bring their girlfriends to tea, and on occasions these girls would bring their brothers along and all of them
boys who, without exception, were officers with their pips and Sam Browne belts. It was all swank, bloody swank, because girls liked that stuff. They would never ask why I wasn’t in uniform, they were brought up educated, too polite, oh no, it was purely implied. They made me feel second rate, second class, they would look at me as if to say, ‘When are you going to join up?’ and their girlfriends would give me derogatory looks, it was humiliating. I was coerced by this pressure of circumstances into the army. I got so fed up with it all that on the last day of November 1915 I thought ‘Blow it!’ I drew my month’s salary from work and went straight out of the office to join up.

Taking the train to Tooting, Cecil met an obliging recruitment sergeant who was patrolling close to the railway station on the look-out for recruits.

He came up to me and asked if I wanted to enlist, then he took me to an office where I gave my name as Sydney George Harrison. I’d heard that the editor of
The Times
was a Harrison and the name went through my mind – nice name that, Harrison, so I stuck with Harrison. I then gave a wrong address, wrong age, so that my parents could not find me. I went before the doctor and, no fuss, passed.