Boy Soldiers of the Great War (36 page)

As Donald Price was making his way down the line, yet another new War Office instruction (No. 1905) was issued, automatically superseding Instruction 1186. Much of the new instruction remained the same – indeed, 1905 was in essence a refinement of what had gone before, except for one key feature. All boys under the age of seventeen would be sent home, irrespective of whether they were ‘willing’ to stay in France. This stipulation was repeated down the chain of command, although the First Army’s Routine Order of 20 October was even more explicit and left no room for negotiation or misinterpretation: ‘All soldiers under 17 years of age … are to be given no option of remaining in this country.’

In another alteration to previous rules, those aged between seventeen and eighteen and a half would be allowed to go home although, as before, their removal from overseas service would be dependent on whether they were ‘willing’ to go or not. If they decided to remain abroad, their services would be ‘utilized behind the firing line’, that is, out of harm’s way, most being sent to one of the Army Schools of Instruction. Those over eighteen and a half were given no option but to remain in France and were posted to a training unit in readiness for their return to the front once they passed their next birthday. Once again, none of these changes applied to officers, although this was never made explicit. At eighteen and two months, Second Lieutenant Harold Cottrell, had he enlisted as a private, could have been on his way home. Then, three weeks after his death, the anomaly was rectified when Instruction 2008 was issued on 22 October 1916: ‘Officers under the age of 19 are not in future to be regarded as eligible to proceed on active service. Their names will not therefore be submitted as reinforcements.’

The instructions of June and October reflect a distinct shift in the Government’s attitude to the whole issue of underage
soldiering. In the space of a few months, it had signalled its acceptance that young boys who had patriotically enlisted would not be punished for the ‘crime’ of fraudulent enlistment. The boys had lied, but almost everyone privately agreed that this was done with the most honourable of intentions.

An alteration in the Government’s stance was to be welcomed but an important qualification should be made. Just because the civilian authorities changed the rules, just because War Office instructions were issued formalizing the change, it did not mean that the order was strictly followed by COs in France and Belgium. Acting Captain Douglas Cuddeford serving with the 12th Highland Light Infantry recorded the alteration in policy and noted that many of the ‘little heroes’, as he called them, did go down the line to Étaples but in the same breath he also noted that ‘a few of these boys stoutly held to the lie about their age and refused point-blank to leave the battalion and the front line! They were the real stuff, and we did our best to look after them.’ Of course no boy could refuse ‘point-blank’ any order to go back, ‘little heroes’ or not, but their pluck had been rewarded, against instructions.

With this change in policy, it might be argued that the authorities had little excuse for reacting so tardily to requests made by families to retrieve their sons. The problem of manpower had been comprehensively addressed by the introduction of conscription in January 1916 and, by using the National Register as a basis for this, the authorities ensured that far fewer boys had been able to enlist under age. Now, the passage of time had gone a great way to alleviating the long-term, as well as the existing, problem for the Government and the army.

Twelve months earlier the army had relied on huge numbers of underage boys, whose service had helped to stabilize a militarily precarious situation on the Western Front. Tens of thousands had enlisted in 1914 and 1915 aged seventeen and eighteen but by October 1916 most of these lads were aged nineteen or twenty,
the age at which they could no longer be recalled, radically pruning the number who might be discharged from the forces. These boys could now legitimately be kept in the firing line. This first tier of underage soldiers was followed by a second: boys who had enlisted at the age of sixteen in 1914. By October 1916 they too were of an age at which most would be retained to serve in France, albeit at a safe distance behind the lines; Donald Price was a good case in point. The temporary loss of these boys, while annoying, was affordable, for virtually all would shortly return to the fray, ready to bolster drafts to the front on a monthly basis.

Only those in a ‘third tier’ – and these were the youngest of the 1914 and 1915 volunteers – would be sent home after the October instruction. These boys were always among the smallest group as a proportion of those who enlisted under age. Private George Collett would have been included among their number had he lived a few months more.

Whether destined to stay in France or go home, all the boys sent down from the line were directed to one of the base camps for processing. George Maher, the thirteen-year-old runaway, was placed on a train near Amiens, destination Étaples.

When I was taken under escort to the railway station, I found I was one of five underage boys from different regiments being sent back to England, and one of them, as I discovered, was even younger than myself.

The boys had been through a great adventure and it was natural to chat among themselves, swapping stories and experiences.

Sixteen-year-old George White was sent on a train to Abbeville where he had to report to the Railway Transport Officer.

I found there were lots of other lads who had just arrived from the front. We were all put on a train which was bound for Rouen. One had been in the trenches with an infantry battalion, his father
having been his company sergeant major. Unfortunately the father had been killed and the young chap’s colleagues had given his age away to his superiors, resulting in the present journey.

The losses on the Somme, combined with the introduction of new rules, did not just facilitate a significant withdrawal of young soldiers from the front line; they also halted the progress of boys going in the other direction.

Tens of thousands of men sent out from Britain as drafts to the Western Front were held at camps along the coast awaiting their turn to join their regiments. This depended upon the normal wastage in the line, estimated at 35,000 men a week, though heavier during major offensives. As they waited, they would be given final courses of instruction, meant as a refresher and final toneup for skills honed in Britain. Training centres, such as the Bull Ring at Étaples, were infamous for their unforgiving regimes, as men, some of whom were returning from injury, were harried and bullied into shape.

These drafts contained boys of all ages, although everyone, like Private Norman Gladden, was supposed to have passed his nineteenth birthday before leaving home. In late August 1916, Norman, along with the rest of his draft, was held in a hut at Étaples. In the distance the rumble of gunfire was distinct and each day Norman and his friends woke to the thought, ‘Is this the day?’ Norman, no hero in the making, was in no hurry to go anywhere. He found the camp a depressing place and watched as draft after draft was sent off, knowing it was only a matter of time before his turn would come.

As a staging-post towards the as yet unknown date of departure, a medical examination was ordered, and a few of the boys were plucked from the ranks and earmarked to stay at the base, ‘a fate that most of us secretly envied’, Norman conceded. Their number included a lad called Chapman who was not pleased at being held back.

A bantam in appearance and full of pluck, he was one of the few who were genuinely eager to join in battle. He was also among those who had falsified their age to the recruiting sergeant. Now, at this late stage, his parents, exercising their legal right, managed to impose a veto on his going to the front before his nineteenth birthday. The prospect of cooling his heels amid the dreary sands of Étaples gave him no pleasure. Nevertheless, his parents were right and, even if their action had saved him but a few months of the horror of the trenches, it was to good purpose. Whether it achieved more than that amount of grace I do not know, for I never met Chapman again.

Regardless of how the boys themselves felt, parents were increasingly aware of their rights and lastminute appeals to prevent a son’s progress to the trenches were common. John Campbell, an apprentice butcher from Scotland, had enlisted at fifteen into the Royal Field Artillery, in April 1915. After just six weeks’ training, he was placed on a draft for the Dardanelles, but his father got wind of what was happening and wired the War Office. His son, along with seven other underage boys, was returned to Scotland to take up defence duties on the east coast.

The following May, just before Instruction 1186, John was sent before a medical board and told that as he had the physique of a boy of eighteen he was being ‘requested to volunteer for foreign service’. John agreed and left almost immediately for France.

I found myself at Étaples … My father at this point wrote to the War Office complaining at my being abroad and still under age. One morning early, when we were expecting to move up to the Somme, the fall-in sounded and I was told to get ready for Blighty, arriving home at Kilmarnock the next morning. I was discharged on 20 June 1916 on the grounds of being under age.

It was only when these young boys got home that they were able to see for themselves the strain under which their families had
lived, something to which George White admitted he had not given much thought.

Mum and Dad explained why they had decided to have me brought from France. They had been told about the tough conditions and the appalling casualty lists on the Somme. The awful winter weather had also been stressed in reports from the front and in view of all that they felt they could not allow me to continue serving there. Of course I accepted the situation and decided to make the most of things back in dear old Blighty.

Such was the gallantry shown by many that it was frequently only injury that brought about the ‘discovery’ of a boy’s real age. Back at a base hospital or all the way home in Britain, the boys were more ready to give up their true ages. In a hospital bed, with the crust of mud and ingrained dirt removed, it was possible once again to reveal the boy. Pride in his achievement might elicit a boy’s age, keen, as he might well be, to tell a pretty young nurse of his exploits. Some too were willing to admit that they had done their bit and felt it was right to call time on their youthful adventures before their families did. Cyril José’s age had been discovered in this manner while he was in hospital in Britain. His family had forwarded his birth certificate, and although he was old enough to be retained in the army, he could look forward to a prolonged stay in Britain before going back overseas.

Horace Calvert could expect similar treatment. He had enlisted just after his fifteenth birthday and had fought in one of the elite regiments in the British Army, the Grenadier Guards. In late September 1916 he had gone over the top in an attack on the village of Lesboeufs on the Somme and had been wounded and returned to England. His father, George, who had been called up under the Derby Scheme, had followed his son to France before being discharged as medically unfit. Having seen the conditions for himself, he decided his son had been through enough.

My father had written and sent my birth certificate to regimental headquarters and told them he didn’t think it was the thing for me to be sent on active service again until I was the right age. The Regiment didn’t say anything to me, they just put down ‘not available for draft’ on my record in the company office.

There were a small number of boys who under the new rules could be discharged to resume civilian life. Private Percy Marshall, a farm servant living near Hull, enlisted into the Machine Gun Corps in 1915. He served several months in France before he was wounded on the Somme, receiving gunshots to his left thigh, the back of his head and his right foot. With the publicity of his miraculous survival and his obvious youth, it was not long before Percy’s real age of sixteen was revealed and he was discharged, ‘Having made a mis-statement as to age on enlistment’ and not, as his family preferred to point out, because he was shot in the head, thigh and foot!

To the public, these boys were heroes, shining examples of youth who had given almost their all to the nation. The affection in which they were held was in almost equal proportion to the level of animosity directed at those who attempted to dodge service in the forces. Not everyone in the army was as impressed as civilians, though. A few home-based NCOs, who talked a good war to recruits, appeared downright envious.

Frank Lindley had finally recovered from the wounds to his leg suffered on the opening day of the Somme offensive. He had been home to see his parents and he had attempted to mollify his mother who was worried that he might be sent back again. He reassured her that there was no prospect of an immediate return. Then, soon after, he went to Pontefract for a medical examination only to find out that his real age had been discovered. Instead of sympathy, he was met with threats. Two years before, Frank might have been intimidated, but not any more.

In the orderly room at the depot at Pontefract, I was called in. They’d rumbled my age. ‘We find you are sixteen years old.’ I said, ‘Well, what does that matter?’ This sergeant major said he was going to prosecute for fraudulent enlistment, so I said, ‘Get yourself over there and do a bit of bloody fighting.’ I tore him a sheet off in soldiers’ Latin. I said, ‘You can’t do me now; you can’t put me in clink here.’ I laughed me stocking tops off.

The army might let boys like Frank Lindley go but there would be no outward appreciation of their services at home or overseas for King and Country. Boys discharged from the ranks were generally bigger and stronger than the day when they enlisted; exercise, training and, for many boys, better food, took care of that. Now back in civilian life, they feared the ritual humiliation and taunting that had once driven some into the forces in the first place: they feared being taken for shirkers.