The gently rolling green landscape of
the Somme is no longer recognizable. It’s become a wasteland, the long grass dotted
with craters, barbed wire and trenches. For the last several days the British army has unleashed
a methodical barrage of artillery on German trenches and positions, aiming to decimate
enemy forces before the ground war starts. On July 1st, 1916 at 7:30 am the Anglo-French
armies attack. Private William ‘Cyril’ Jose is in the very first wave of men to
go over the top of the trenches. It’s a chaotic bloodbath. The British artillery
has not destroyed the Germans as hoped. German snipers and machine gunners unleash a
hailstorm of bullets on the charging soldiers. Less than 20 minutes into battle Cyril is wounded. He’s shot in the chest and left shoulder. Two
comrades grab Cyril’s field pack. They rip open his uniform and drench Cyril’s wounds with iodine.
They help Cyril press dressing to his chest, trying to staunch the blood. However, in minutes
his bandages are soaked through. In the mayhem, he’s left for dead near the German wire.
Private Cyril Jose is only 16 years old. He spends the next few hours drifting in
and out of consciousness. Eventually he goes beyond fear and reaches a calm state
of mind, thinking that he might survive. It’s a cloudless, hot summer day and Cyril’s
thirsty. Agonizingly slow, Cyril reaches for his water bottle. He dares not move fast, he doesn’t
want to alert the Germans that he’s still alive. It’s many long minutes before Cyril is
able to move the water bottle to his mouth and take a sip. The day wears
on. When Cyril runs out of water, he slowly retrieves the water bottles
of fallen comrades who lie near him. Night falls. The stench of
death hangs heavy in the air. By now the battlefield is covered in
thousands of dead and dying soldiers. Germans patrols search among the
fallen, taking wounded men prisoner. Cyril lies clutching a grenade, ready at
any moment to pull the pin with his teeth. Around 7 am the next day, almost
24 hours after he was wounded, Cyril thinks it’s safe enough to move. He begins
a long, painful crawl on his belly through the grass back towards the British trenches. His
activity causes his wounds to bleed a fresh. During the excruciating, hazardous
journey, Cyril runs into Private Lamacraft, who’s also badly wounded, but still clinging
to life. For an hour they crawl together, but make little progress. Both soldiers
are weak and suffering from blood loss. Worse yet, the Germans see them
moving and start shooting at them. Cyril’s in slightly better physical shape
and they decide that he should go on alone. Cyril spends precious time gathering nearby water
bottles for Lamacraft. Then he continues on, stiffly and painfully creeping through the
grass, detouring around the dead and avoiding craters. During part of his crawl the land slopes
upward and frequently Cyril has to stop to rest. To quote Cyril, “an eternity later”
he finally reaches the British lines. Mustering all his strength, Cyril struggles
to his feet and quickly throws himself into a trench. When he regains consciousness,
two officers are trying to make him drink rum. It’s taken him nearly 2 days
to crawl about ¼ of a mile (.40 km). Cyril begs that they send someone to rescue
“Lammy”, but it’s far too dangerous. However Private Lamacraft is found alive 3 days later,
most likely sustained by the water Cyril provided. Cyril is medically evacuated from the Somme and spends nearly 6 months in
the hospital recuperating. Cyril isn’t the only underaged British
soldier at the Battle of the Somme. Although the official age to join the military
in Britain is 18 and a soldier must be 19 to be shipped overseas, an estimated 250,000 boys
enlist into the British forces during World War I. Cyril actually signed up when he was 15 years old.
The youngest known British World War I soldier was 12. Wait a minute, didn’t recruiters notice that
some of those enlisting looked suspiciously young? During the early 20th century, many people
didn’t have birth certificates and it was a lot easier to lie about age. For recruits,
Britain had a minimum height requirement of 5ft 3in (1.60m), and a minimum
chest size of 34in (0.86m). Often if a young man met the physical criteria,
recruiters ignored that he was baby faced. Beside, patriot fervor reigned in the country.
Government propaganda pushed fighting for Britain as a glorious adventure. In some areas, peer
pressure was strong and groups of boys would join up together. Some enlisted to escape poverty,
unemployment or difficult home situations. Also, when World War I broke out, the standing
German army was over 3 times bigger than the standing British army. A large number of soldiers
needed to be mobilized as quickly as possible. If a healthy young lad was eager to go off
to fight, recruiters weren’t gonna say no. The bounty recruiters were paid didn’t hurt
either. Recruiters earned two shillings and sixpence for each new army recruit or
about £6 or $7.85 USD in today’s money. 14 year old Reginald St. John Battersby ran away
from home, enlisted in the army and was promoted to lance corporal within a week. When his father,
a vicar near Manchester found out, he was upset. Given their social standing in the community, he
thought that his son deserved a higher position. He sought support from the Lord Mayor
of Manchester and the headmaster of Middleton Grammar School where St. John
had been a pupil. They provided letters of reference to authorities regarding
St. John’s leadership qualities. And so, St. John was commissioned as an
officer in the East Lancashire Regiment, becoming the youngest known commissioned
officer of the British Army during WWI. Not long after his 15th birthday, he was
stationed near Serre in the Somme region and placed in charge of a 60 man platoon, some
of whom were a decade or more older than him. T During the first day of the Somme offensive on
July 1, 1916, St. John was severely wounded by German machine gun fire. As a result, he was
medically evacuated to England. Three months later, St. John had recovered from his wounds and
was back at the Somme leading his men into battle. St. John actually could have made
the choice to stay in England. Parents of young soldiers alarmed
by newspaper reports of deaths had lobbied the British government. By 1916,
the government bowed to public pressure and removed soldiers younger than 19 from the
front lines. However, experienced officers were in short supply and young officers such as St.
John were allowed the option to stay if they wish. The underage soldiers were sent to special camps
where they remained until they turned 19 years old and then they could return to fighting.
Some were glad to be away from battle, but others weren’t fans of the young
soldier camps. Battle hardened teens, some of whom had responsibilities far
beyond their years--some even having earned military medals for their heroic actions-
balked at being treated like boys again. Some of the young soldiers, completely
disillusioned by the reality of war, took their own lives rather
than return to the front lines. Private Cyril was shipped to a young soldier’s
camp. In the summer of 1918, when he was old enough to fight again, he returned to France.
Cyril fought in the Hundred Days Offensive. He ended up surviving the war, but came home changed.
For the rest of his life he became anti-authority. Compelled by a sense of duty, St. John returned
to the front lines and spent the next few months fighting in the trenches. On March 7, 1917
16 year old St. John and a few of his men were standing under a bridge across the British
trenches when they were hit by a German shell. Several soldiers were killed. A piece of shrapnel
mangled St. John’s leg and it had to be amputated. He was evacuated to England again to convalesce.
Though asked to resign his commission, St. John was determined to continue to aid
in the war effort. He got a prosthetic leg and was declared fit for duty on March
13, 1918. Soon after he returned to service, St. John joined the Royal Engineers Record Office
Transportation Branch and worked an administrative job in Britain until September 1920 when he
resigned his commission. St. John then studied theology in college and eventually became the
vicar of a small rural parish like his father. As World War I raged overseas, the women of
Britain stepped up to take over jobs traditionally done by men. Often it was teenage girls who took
on various jobs to help support their families and the war effort. Organizations sprang up to manage
and support the young women taking on new duties. The Women's Land Army (WLA), a civilian
organisation, was created in 1915 by the British Board of Agriculture. The “Land
Girls” or women who worked for the WLA harvested crops and performed
other farm related tasks. The Canary Girls worked in munitions manufacturing
TNT. They gained the nickname because exposure to TNT was toxic, and repeated exposure
turned their skin an orange-yellow color. The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a civilian
nursing unit that provided medical care for military personnel. As the war wore on, young VAD
nurses were dispatched to work in field hospitals. Teenage girls as young as 17, who had only
completed basic training, were required to treat horrific war wounds and deal with death while
under constant threat of attack from the enemy. While it’s likely that during World War I, Britain
had the most soldiers under 18 years of age, all the countries at war had underage
soldiers enlisted among their ranks. 8 year old Momčilo Gavrić of Serbia was the
youngest soldier to fight in World War I. He was born into a large family--the
8th child out of 11. The Gavrićs lived in the small village of Trbušnica in
the western region of the country. In August 1914, Austro-Hungarian soldiers of
the 42nd Croatian Home Guard Infantry Division murdered Momčilo’s parents, grandmother, his
three sisters, and four of his brothers. The invading soldiers also burned his home to the
ground. Momčilo survived because he wasn’t at home when the attack happened. His father,
anticipating trouble, had sent him to his uncle’s. Momčilo returned home to a horrific scene which
was burned into his mind for the rest of his life. With most of his family dead and nowhere to
live, Momčilo ran to a nearby town where the 6th Artillery Division of the Serbian army was
stationed. Upon hearing Momčilo’s tragic news, Major Stevan Tucović, accepted him into
his unit. Another soldier in the unit, Miloš Mišović, was assigned to look after
Momčilo. The same evening, Momčilo took revenge by going on a scouting mission with Miloš
and showing the Serbian Army the location of the Austro-Hungarian soldiers. He also participated
in the subsequent bombardment of the invaders. After the Battle of Cer, when Momčilo was 8, he
was promoted to the rank of Corporal and given a military uniform. During the winter of 1914,
Momčilo fought along his unit in the Battle of Kolubara. In early 1915 when the Serbian army
crossed the snow-covered Albanian mountains, Momčilo marched right alongside
the rest of the soldiers. When his unit was sent to Thessaloniki in Greece,
Major Tucović sent Momčilo to a safe small town in Macedonia where he quickly went through the
equivalent of 4 years of elementary school crammed into several months. Later Momčilo
was wounded during the Battle of Kajmakcalan. At 10 years old he was promoted to Lance Sergeant. After the liberation of Belgrade in 1918, Major
Tucović helped Momčilo receive aid from a British mission that was helping war orphans in
Serbia. Momčilo was sent to England for high school. In 1921 after graduating at age
15, Momčilo returned to Serbia per the orders of the Serbian Prime Minister who wanted all the
war orphans to return home. He was reunited with his 3 older brothers who had already left
home before the family massacre in 1914. In 1929, 23 year old Momčilo was conscripted into
the army. He reported that he had already served in the army during WWI, had been wounded and had
even received an Albanian Commemorative Medal. An ethnic Croat officer in the Royal
Yugoslav Army tried to force Momčilo into signing a confession that he was
lying about his World War I service. Momčilo refused to sign and ended up serving two
months in jail. After another stint in the army, Momčilo worked as a graphic designer and
got married. Years later, he was called up and served in World War II. Momčilo ended up
being captured twice by German occupying forces. It’s hard to estimate how many underaged soldiers
were killed while serving in World War I. For those lucky enough to return home, the
horror of what they saw and experienced often haunted them the rest of their lives. Sadly, underaged soldiers are not just
a phonomena that happened in the past. Today, thousands of children around
the world are forced into war or forced to serve as menial or
slave labor to support fighters. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
and other organizations continue to work to improve the plight of child soldiers and remove
those under 18 from fighting wars altogether. How and why did World War I
start? You can find out here: During World War I, a new kind
of fighting machine was created: the tank. However it took a while
to work out some kinks in design. Check out the story of Little Willie,
the most useless tank ever made here:
