Boy Soldiers of the Great War (51 page)

Vic Cole training with the signals section of the 7th Royal West Kent Regiment. In September 1914, aged seventeen, he enlisted with his sixteen-year-old friend George Pulley. Vic was wounded twice during the war.

Frank Lindley enlisted at fourteen, hoping to avenge the death of his elder brother early on in the war. Two years later Frank went over the top on 1 July 1916.

William Swift
(top)
, sentenced to three years’ youth detention for theft, was released on licence into the Army in 1916. He liked the life and proved to be a good athlete before being sent to France under age; he was killed in action in 1917. Thomas Clarke
(above)
was also sent to borstal for theft but was later allowed to join the Army. He was sent to France at eighteen and deserted, being court-martialled, sentenced to death and reprieved. He was killed in action on the Somme in November 1916 and is buried in New Munich Trench Cemetery close to where he fell.

Brandenburg Prisoner of War Camp, Germany. Boys who fought under age and were captured were brought together and given tuition behind the barbed wire by other educated soldiers.

Horace Iles aged fourteen. Having enlisted into the Leeds Pals soon after the outbreak of war, he went to the Somme aged sixteen. In May he was wounded and two months later he was killed in action.

The front and back of the envelope used when Horace’s sister, Florrie, wrote to her brother to persuade him to come home. It was stamped ‘Killed in Action’ and returned.

Private James Walters. James had previously served at Gallipoli and was fighting on the Somme when he was killed aged sixteen. His mother had already begun the process of applying for her son’s discharge.

The memorial card printed to mark James’s death.

The pass for France issued to James’s mother, Hannah, so that she could visit his grave in 1935. The pass was valid for nine days only, and it is believed that this was the only trip she made. She died soon afterwards.

Private William Plant aged seventeen, wounded and in hospital after nine months in France. On the back of this picture was written ‘Don’t send this home’.

Sixteen-year-old machine gunner Percy Marshall
(second right)
with friends, recovering in a London hospital from injuries received on the Somme.

‘Having made a mis-statement as to age on enlistment,’ Percy Marshall was discharged in September 1916.

A group of soldiers in France on Christmas Day, 1916. All were under the age of eighteen, and had been removed from the line. Several had been overseas since 1915.

Major Cardinal Harford
(middle left)
with some of the boys at Etaples. He had been badly wounded in the Boer War and fought in the trenches before being ordered to look after a thousand lads removed from the line in 1917.