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==See also== |
==See also== |
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*[[Momčilo Gavrić (military)| |
*[[Momčilo Gavrić (military)|Momčilo Gavrić]], in Serbian military from age eight; youngest soldier in World War I in any nation. |
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==References== |
==References== |
Revision as of 16:45, 22 November 2013
The youngest authenticated British soldier in World War I was the twelve-year-old Sidney Lewis who fought at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Lewis's claim has only recently been authenticated. In World War I a number of young boys joined up to serve as soldiers before they were eighteen, the legal age to serve in the army. It was previously reported that the youngest British soldier was an unnamed boy, also twelve, sent home from France in 1917 with other underage boys from various regiments.
George Maher
George Maher (20 May 1903 – c.1999[1]) was only thirteen when he lied to a recruiting officer by claiming he was eighteen and was allowed to join up with the 2nd Battalion King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment. Maher was sent to the front lines and his actual age was not found out until he began crying during heavy shelling and was taken before an officer of his regiment to reveal his young age. George said he was then locked in a train with a number of other young boys who had all lied to join up as well. Maher said "The youngest was twelve years old. A little nuggety bloke he was, too. We joked that the other soldiers would have had to have lifted him up to see over the trenches." Maher's story was first reported in Richard van Emden's 1998 book Veterans: the last survivors of the Great War[2] and later featured in Last Voices of World War One, a 2009 Channel Four documentary. The boy Maher met was formerly reported as the youngest British soldier in World War I, but the claim has never been authenticated.[3]
Sidney Lewis
Sidney Lewis (c. March 1903 – 1969) enlisted in the East Surrey Regiment in August 1915. He fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 in the 106th Machine Gun Company of the Machine Gun Corps.[4][5] He was sent home after his mother sent his birth certificate to the War Office. Lewis was awarded the Victory Medal and the British War Medal. He joined the police in Kingston upon Thames after the war and later ran a pub in Frant, East Sussex. He died in 1969.[4][6][5]
Lewis's claim has been authenticated by the Imperial War Museum after research by van Emden uncovered the evidence, including family papers and Lewis's birth certificate. The family papers have been donated to the museum by Lewis's surviving son. Lewis's story was also found to have been reported in newspapers at the time.[4][6][5]
See also
- Momčilo Gavrić, in Serbian military from age eight; youngest soldier in World War I in any nation.
References
- ^ Emden (Kindle version)
- ^ Richard van Emden; Steve Humphries, Veterans: the last survivors of the Great War, Leo Cooper, 1998, ISBN 085052640X.
- ^ Julie Henry, "Boy, 12, was 'youngest British soldier in First World War'", Daily Telegraph, 31 October 2009.
- ^ a b c "Sidney officially youngest WW1 soldier at age of 12", Daily Mirror, 11 November 2013, page 6 (includes photo of Lewis), retrieved from InfoTrac Custom Newspapers (subscription required), 20 November 2013.
- ^ a b c Ben Farmer, "Boy of 12 was Britain's youngest Great War soldier", Daily Telegraph, 10 November 2013, retreived online and archived 20 November 2013.
- ^ a b Nicholas Hellen, "Boy, 12, was Britain's youngest soldier in First World War", Sunday Times, 10 November 2013, retrieved online and archived 20 November 2013.