On Salisbury Plain in Britain, during the early winter months of 1915, sixteen-yearold Private J.H. MacArthur of Vancouver stood at attention with his Canadian comrades in arms. He was proudly ramrod stiff in his uniform and carrying a rifle, as Queen Mary (queen consort of King George V) inspected the soldiers before they left to serve on the First World War’s Western Front. Dutifully moving down the line of khaki-clad soldiers, she stopped before MacArthur. She paused and asked him his age. “Nineteen, your majesty,” he replied. She stared and then shook her head, whispering, “you naughty boy.”
Was it a royal reproach or a sly wink? It seems the former, but could have been the latter. Such was the ambivalent attitude found throughout Canadian society during the Great War of 1914 to 1918. Canadians of all ages knew that underage boys were enlisting for overseas service but did little to interfere. While military regulations stipulated that the minimum age of service was eighteen (later nineteen), thousands of teenagers, including a cheeky Canadian ten-yearold, enlisted and served overseas.
These young men served King and country. While some conscientious recruiting sergeants and medical officers denied the unwhiskered and baby-faced the chance to carry a rifle, other regimental representatives had quotas to fill and pointed to where the boy should sign. As thirteen-year-old Roy Henley remarked of the enlistment process in 1915, “They were looking for warm bodies. They looked in one ear and if they couldn’t see through, well, you were in.” Henley served as a soldier and survived the war, although he suffered a shrapnel wound in his back, dangerously close to his spine. Thousands of other underage teenagers, most of them between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, slipped into the army and then overseas.
While some of the absurdly young were siphoned off for special training units in England — including the largest, called the Young Soldiers Battalion — thousands of underage boys served in the trenches. Records do not reveal the full number of underage Canadian soldiers — since they lied about their ages in order to to enlist — but estimates are as high as twenty thousand. These soldiers trudged into the line amid shells and dismembered bodies. Some of the boys served with great gallantry, while others were crushed by the pressure.
Dan Black, respected editor of Legion Magazine, and John Boileau, a retired army colonel and the author of ten books, tell the compelling story of Canada’s war effort through these underage witnesses. While no new interpretations are offered in chronicling Canada’s war effort, Black and Boileau have conducted prodigious research to unearth these hidden stories of service. The authors bring to light dozens of powerful stories of service and sacrifice from these young soldiers, uncovering wartime letters, post-war memoirs, and oral histories that shed light on their wartime experiences. Equally powerful are the many photographs of young men in uniform that continually jolt the reader. Few of these adolescents could now be mistaken
for adults.
Perhaps the greatest strength of Old Enough to Fight is that these stories may resonate deeply with today’s youth and help them to connect with the war of one hundred years ago. Knowing that thousands of teenagers served in the trenches may help today’s youth reflect upon the service, sacrifice, and folly of a Canada and its peoples that seems both very far away and ever so close.
By war’s end, an estimated two thousand underage soldiers were killed, contributing to Canada’s ghastly wartime death toll of sixtysix thousand slain. Donald Gordon of the 8th Battalion, another teenaged soldier, served in the Ypres salient in April 1915. Amid the mud and carnage, and the stench of unburied corpses, young Gordon scrawled in the Bible under his tunic, “Goodbye Mother, Forgive Me.” He was killed by a sniper’s bullet a few days later. We’ll never know if his mother forgave him. I hope she did.
— Tim Cook (Read bio)
Tim Cook is a member of the Order of Canada and the author of eight history books, including Fight to the Finish: Canadians and the Second World War.