An incredible book about boy soldiers caught up in the euphoria of WW1. Richard's incredible research brings together a 450 page book that you just can't put down. Each chapter has a heading on a gravestone of a young underage soldier who paid the ultimate price. It was incredible to find that the youngest underage soldier was 12 years old ,( Sidney Lewis)- a child in year 7 in todays Education system. As a pupil support worker in a Primary School who works with P7's, this absolutely stunned me as did so many other things in this brilliant book. After parents realised their boys had signed up, the army required them to forward their boy's Birth Certificates to prove they were underage. It beggars belief that recruiting sergeants and the medical Doctors allowed this to happen, one can only feel the dearth of men signing up in the early years of WW1 meant that they were more than happy to allow these young boys to sign up. Still it was awful that these young lads were caught up in a euphoric call for King and Country, that older men didn't want to answer, some wanted to escape their mundane jobs and lives of poverty for a life of as they saw it - adventure!
Richard Van Emden puts the figure of Boy Soldiers who fought in the Great War at over 400,000 a staggering figure, many of whom paid the ultimate price in battles which are so well known to us - Mons, The Somme, Loos, Arras, to name but a few and the Spring offensive of 1918.
The sterling work of Sir Alfred Markham, a Liberal MP, who I confess to having never heard of, is given some prominence in the book. Markham spoke numerous times in Parliament and had some success in securing the release of many underage soldiers who served at home and abroad. Some underage soldiers were kept behind the lines until they reached the required age. This book is brilliantly well written, the research by Richard is just incredible, and his meetings and recordings with veterans over many years has undoubtedly helped his research. Thank you Richard for this book, it was totally absorbing to read and I confess to having a tear in my eye reading a lot of the pages. I can heartedly recommend Boy Soldiers Of The Great War to everyone who has a keen interest in WW1.
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Top reviews from other countries
- iain macmillanReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 17, 2023
A must read for all interested in WW1!!
- PeterReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 13, 2023
If you have an interest in the Great War, this is a must read!
