Boy soldiers in India with the TF

[ddycher]

All

 

spent a fascinating weekend tracking 1914 boy soldiers in the TF Bn I am researching. Was amazed how many 14 and 15 year olds sailed for India. 

 

I know now there was a weeding in country in 1915 resulting in the repatriation of a large number of underage boys .(It was one of these service records that started me off). Anyone come across this before ?

 

regards

Dave

[Retlaw]

21 minutes ago, ddycher said:

All

 

spent a fascinating weekend tracking 1914 boy soldiers in the TF Bn I am researching. Was amazed how many 14 and 15 year olds sailed for India. 

 

I know now there was a weeding in country in 1915 resulting in the repatriation of a large number of underage boys .(It was one of these service records that started me off). Anyone come across this before ?

 

regards

Dave

Just spent quite a few hours making a chart for my eldest daughter, whose creating an exhibition, the chart  shows the known ages of  the men & boys who didn't last the war out, either Kiled, died of wounds, died, or were discharged because of wounds, I did it for the whole of the Borough, just a sample of some

2   15 year old  at Gallipoli

10  16 year olds

15   17 year olds

51  18 year olds

122 19 year olds. and so on up to the age of 50, haven't added all the totals up, but theres a few hundred, was going to post a picture, but batteries died in camnera.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, ddycher said:

All

 

spent a fascinating weekend tracking 1914 boy soldiers in the TF Bn I am researching. Was amazed how many 14 and 15 year olds sailed for India. 

 

I know now there was a weeding in country in 1915 resulting in the repatriation of a large number of underage boys .(It was one of these service records that started me off). Anyone come across this before ?

 

regards

Dave

 

      The British peacetime garrison in India appears to have had a fair few soldiers well below the age for active service with the BEF in France.  Boy soldiers, boy buglers, etc.  I think it was considered quite normal before the war and again after it. I seem to remember the late (great) Norman Wisdom was a boy soldier in India at the end of the 1920s. Thus, it does not seem untoward that if there were boy soldiers in the Great War (and I seem to remember that peacetime terms of Regular engagement continued through the war), then soldiers "underage" for service in France and Flanders, etc. would have been deployed to free-up older troops for front-line service.  It is a variation on the substitution of the imperial garrisons on the outbreak of war with either Territorials (eg the HAC in Egypt and at Aden-the 1915 campaign was just a normal imperial policing operation) or  those battalions that were churned to be men of lower medical grades than was the ideal for France and Flanders- The Middlesex battalion (which was later used in Siberia) as the garrison battalion at Hong Kong  for example- "B" men  but competent enough for an imperial garrison.  It was, of course, in the interest of the manpower planners of the Army to continue to allow boy soldiers -as per peacetime-as the substitution effect was an important addition to manpower. These boys could not be called up (after MSA) but the freeing-up of older manpower had the same effect-every boy soldier of 15,16,17   had the effect of placing another man in the front line.

      I return to an old paradox of conscription under MSA-  Boy soldiers (ie underage enlistment, rather than enlisted at true age on "boy" terms)  were a phenomenon of 1914-1915- the introduction of MSA made such under-age enlistment that more difficult,as conscritpion was based on written records of age-so anomalies would show up.

     My grandfather was one who was held back for a time from service in South Africa during the Boer War- as he was only 17 when the main bulk of his unit ( a London volunteer unit)  went off in late 1899- he went later.

Edited 5 August , 2018 by Guest