Boy Soldiers of the Great War (30 page)

The new rules had also changed the position of other ranks. Where once commanding officers had decided whether to keep an underage boy at the front, now, once the parent had applied, it was up to the boy himself to make the final decision. The question remained. Would a boy be allowed to make the choice of his own free will or would he be subjected to undue pressure from his commanding officer? It was another example of how the issue was unnecessarily clouded for both politicians and the public.

Further clarification was still needed. MPs wanted to know, for instance, whether, in considering a boy’s release, the age used would be the one that was ‘real’ or ‘official’. Tennant replied:

It was to overcome the difficulty we found in accepting the given age [on attestation] as the real age that we have made this departure from our previous custom. We are now having recourse entirely to the birth certificate.

To speed up the whole process, Tennant recommended that parents should send their applications, including the birth certificate, to
the officer in charge of records rather than direct to the War Office, which would only lead to delays. ‘Would it not be quite as well for parents to write direct to commanding officers?’ asked one MP. ‘Yes,’ replied Tennant, ‘I think it would be quicker.’

Ironically, commanding officers had had the power to refuse a boy’s discharge in the past and had not always known or chosen to use it. George Adams, who had fought at the Battle of Loos when he was sixteen, had become exhausted by his experiences at the front, and was increasingly anxious to get away. His parents had written requesting his discharge in late 1915. The following month, George was sent for, and medically examined. George wrote to his family:

A report was sent away, and today I had to go up in front of the CO. He asked if I was still willing to serve and tried to coax me to say I would, but my answer was ‘No,’ so he said he would send me back, so I am expecting to get away at any time. I don’t know if he meant the Base or Blighty. I hope he meant the last.

Six days later, George was sent to the base depot at Rouen and, soon after, back to Britain where he was discharged.

One rule remained the same. Other than in cases of ‘extreme youth’, no boy in the front line could be the architect of his own salvation. Even if lads suddenly changed their minds and decided they wanted to get out, the best they could do was to write and ‘encourage’ their families to make an application, and then await due process.

Like George Adams, Private Claude Damant was exhausted. He had gone to France aged sixteen in November 1915 and had suffered in the winter weather. In desperation he had written to his mother who forwarded his birth certificate so that he could ‘make use of it’ and he had been pulled out of the ranks for further training at St Omer. He was not a boy with the strongest constitution, and in January he had come down with enteric fever and
been hospitalized before being returned to duty. However, days later he was transferred to England. Yet, to his mother’s surprise, he was not sent home but kept in the army until a formal procedure of discharge was undertaken whereby Claude’s mother sent a now rather grubby, Western Front soiled birth certificate as proof of age and requested his discharge.

Claude’s father had died when his son was still a baby and his mother had remarried. Mrs Diprose, as she became, was keen to get her son home. Claude was her only son and she knew he was not strong. Her letter dated 12 July 1916, requesting her son’s discharge, was processed quickly. On 28 July he gathered up his belongings and made his own way home to Clapham in London, to be greeted by his delighted parents. And by the morning he was dead. His death, certified by a civilian doctor Richard Jaques, noted that ‘suppurative meningitis’ had been the cause.

When fifteen-year-old Albert Harvey – the Hull boy inspired to join up after a Zeppelin raid on his home town – was called before the CO, he was given no opportunity to keep up any pretence, for the officer was holding a copy of his birth certificate, proof that he was born on 4 July 1900, and not 1896 as he had attested. Albert was concerned only that if he was discharged people would consider him a ‘mother’s darling’ for coming home and, with this in mind, spoke to the CO.

I still implied that I would like to stay out. I gathered that if I still wished it, they would arrange for me to do some job miles behind the lines. Smiling, the CO told me to think it over and report the next morning.

Albert’s friends in the platoon were in no doubt what he should do. ‘You young fool, get back home,’ said one. ‘What do you think? He has the chance to go home and isn’t taking it!’ scoffed another. The opinion of his friends settled Albert’s mind. ‘When
I reported at the office the next morning, I accepted the idea of discharge.’

Instruction 1186 was just one of forty-eight emanating from the War Office that June week of 1916, and although it made a key change in the way boy soldiers would be handled in future, it was not front-page news. The whole issue had never become one of fundamental importance on the political stage; there was, after all, a war to be won. Yet underage soldiering was a protracted problem, if a lesser one, that had proved contentious and difficult to resolve. It had been a thorn in the side of the Government when other, more pressing, issues had come and gone.

It was perhaps a pity that the announcement of Instruction 1186 received only passing attention. The national news, understandably, had concentrated on recent events, not least the death of Lord Kitchener, drowned aboard HMS
Hampshire
, which had sunk after hitting a mine. The Prime Minister had temporarily assumed responsibility for the War Office until a replacement was found, Lloyd George becoming the new Minister for War in early July. The death of the national icon produced an enormous sense of shock. By the time this had begun to abate, minds were turning to the offensive about to break on the Somme. If the public had been able to foresee the enormous casualties of that first day, perhaps the cause of retrieving so many young boys from service overseas might have been given greater urgency.

9
The Big Push

A BOY IN YEARS
A MAN IN DEEDS

18/596 Private Willie Whitaker
18th West Yorkshire Regiment

Killed in Action 1 July 1916, aged 18

In June 1916, the British Army was in the final stages of preparation for a major offensive. Nicknamed the ‘Big Push’, the assault was designed to smash the enemy’s defences and allow the British to decisively break through the stalemate of the Western Front and relieve the French Army under pressure from the German offensive at Verdun. The attack would begin a general advance by the Allied armies that would send the Germans reeling all the way back, it was hoped, to Berlin.

Until July 1915, the Somme region had been held by the French but, as part of the BEF’s expanding commitment to the war, it was agreed that British troops would take over and occupy the area to the north of the river Somme, while the French would remain on the ground to the south. Both armies would serve side by side and, largely because of this, the region was chosen for a symbolic joint attack: Allies together, shoulder to shoulder.

One of the first battalions to arrive on the Somme in 1915 had been the 7th Royal West Kents, and among their number were teenage friends Vic Cole and George Pulley. Vic had been sent to
the Signals Section of the battalion and the two had been parted, but their paths still crossed, giving them a chance to catch up on news from home. The signals station was housed in a ruined flour mill near the village of Suzanne. Vic recalled:

This sector, being on the extreme right of the British line at that time, was full of interest. Across the narrow millstream our right-hand company made contact with the left-hand company of the French Army, which stretched from here to the Swiss Alps.

The planned assault on the Somme was to be delivered in the main by troops of Kitchener’s New Volunteer Army, including Vic’s battalion. Throughout May and June, huge columns of these keen but largely untested men had made their way to the region, while hundreds of guns of all calibres were brought up and concealed from enemy eyes. Huge stockpiles of ammunition were prepared so that on 24 June these guns could launch the heaviest bombardment of the war to date. For five days, twenty-four hours a day, the guns would blaze away at the enemy trenches that stood before eight fortified villages. As a finale, five enormous mines, laboriously dug beneath strong points in the German front line, would be blown. These mines had been constructed by the Royal Engineers, and prepared with great care and precision. Once detonated, they would send a huge column of earth into the air and, if all went according to plan, hundreds of yards of enemy trench and everyone who sheltered there, too.

Shortly before the offensive began, Vic was granted home leave. He was about to depart when, at the bottom of a hill, he spotted George Pulley on a fatigue party. George was digging a trench and after a few moments he looked up. Seeing Vic, his face broke into a broad smile and he waved vigorously. Then, as he waved, a stray shell appeared to land flush with the very section of trench that George was digging. For a moment the scene was covered with smoke and dust and as it cleared Vic
looked on, expecting the worst. Then there was George again, still smiling, still waving.

Vic himself was soon to have a stroke of luck too. After eleven months of war he was rather less enthusiastic than he had been and at the end of his leave he had had to drag his young body back to the war. It was late June and the bombardment was well under way. On arrival in France, he was sent to the village of Meaulte, well behind the lines on the Somme, although ‘The continuous roar of heavy guns here was overpowering and air activity was considerable,’ he recalled. He was due to sleep one night in an old barn before rejoining the battalion. About midnight, he was awoken by the shattering noise of an explosion and a gaping hole appeared in the far wall. ‘Several men had bruises or cuts from the flying splinters and my trousers were wet with blood from a gash in my side just above the hip-bone.’ It was a small wound, but Vic would not take part in the coming offensive when his battalion, George Pulley included, would go over the top to attack Montauban, one of the eight fortified villages.

The air activity that Vic noticed included Cecil Lewis’s No. 3 Squadron RFC. A pilot’s most vulnerable time was in the first few weeks of service, but after two months on the Somme Cecil was still going strong and had been given orders to photograph and re-photograph enemy trenches, as shells saturated the enemy’s front and support lines. These images would help senior commanders determine the success of the bombardment. Only after this would the troops go over, supported in part by 185 aircraft of the RFC. These planes would monitor the progress of the advancing troops, acting as contact patrols, passing on information between the front line and headquarters.

One of those manning the guns was Len Thomas, serving with his battery of 9.2-inch howitzers. Despite orders, Len continued to record day-to-day events, his frequent scribbling unseen or ignored by those around him. The number of shells available to the battery, he had noted, was out of all proportion to those held
behind the guns at the Battle of Loos. Then they had had 100 rounds; for the Somme they had been allocated 3,000, each shell weighing 290 lb.

On the 26th we were firing all day and night and plenty of infantry were marching down. The 27th was wet, but it didn’t stop us sending plenty over. Very many guns around here. The food was very poor. Never do I remember getting any food when we were firing all night, nothing after tea till breakfast, about fifteen hours. I used to nibble one of the very hard biscuits for hours. The 28th was again wet, and the attack was postponed for a day or so …

The bombardment had been extended too, to seven days, and the advance postponed until 1 July. Rain and heavy cloud had made reconnaissance difficult, so pilots were ordered to fly low to take pictures. This put them directly in the line of fire, as Cecil Lewis well knew.

At two thousand feet we were in the path of the gun trajectories, and as the shells passed, above or below us, the wind eddies made by their motion flung the machine up and down, as if in a gale. Each bump meant that a passing shell had missed the machine by four or five feet. Grimly I kept the machine in its course above the trenches, waiting, tense and numb, for a shell to get us, while Sergeant Hall worked the old camera handle, changed the plates, sighted, made his exposures. I envied him having something to do. I could only hold the machine as steady as possible and pray for it to be over.

It was the eve of the attack, and the infantry prepared to move up into their positions. They were addressed by commanding officers who pronounced words of encouragement and warning. The attack was to be pressed home, and there was to be no falling back.

The 7th Royal West Kents had paraded to hear their pep-talk. It finished with a Special Order sent by the brigade commander:
I wish it to be impressed on all ranks the importance of the operation about to commence. Success will mean the shortening of the war, failure means the war prolonged indefinitely. Success or failure depends on the individual effort and fighting spirit of every single man. The Germans are now outnumbered and outgunned, and will soon go to pieces if every man goes into the fight determined to get through whatever the local difficulties may be.

I am confident the 55th Brigade will distinguish itself in this its first battle. Let every man remember that all England and all the World is watching them.

GOOD LUCK. WE MEET AGAIN IN MONTAUBAN.

T. D. Jackson, Brigadier General

Commanding 55th Infantry Brigade

Further north, sixteen-year-old Frank Lindley listened to a similar pre-battle speech forearmed with a healthy dose of scepticism.

On the eve of battle a bloke came, I believe it was Lieutenant General Hunter-Weston. We were in this clearing in the wood and we all crowded round and he started talking to us. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a bandbox, all polished up with red tabs. He says, ‘Now, you men, you will get on the top and you’ll walk across with port arms and go straight into the German line.’ There was a rumour that a bloke said to him, ‘Where will tha be?’