CHILDREN OF WWI

CHILDREN WERE EXPECTED TO ALSO TAKE ON DIFFERENT ROLES DUE TO WAR

In a collection of school essays, published in 1915, The World War and Personal Expressions by Children: 150 German School Essays, students discuss their experience of war through the events that they have experienced – for example, saying goodbye to their father, news of missing or killed family members, celebrations after a victory, or the constant sound of bombs. What is also clear from this is how deeply children are influenced by propaganda – for example, they anticipate a victory through the cultural and educational recollection of past German victories. Here, then, we have evidence of how children are both products of propaganda and also producers of the same. An Austrian essay, ‘How I made a nightly attack on London with my Zeppelin’, is a story written by a child imagining successfully attacking London . We can see that new technologies were often a source of excitement for children, so that which is figured in adult writing about the war as a source of terror or fear, is, in children’s writing, a source of interest and excitement. - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/childrens-experiences-of-world-war-one#sthash.XwdJJnr6.dpuf

Children’s lives were often expected to continue as normal, and the French photograph ‘Mère et enfant munies d’un masque à gaz’ [‘Mother and child wearing gas masks’] shows a child helping her mother cook, but the insertion of the gas mask here is indicative of anxieties surrounding the development of long-range weapons and advances in chemical warfare. It indicates how the domestic space of the home was also a potential site of invasion, and the way in which the child was thus positioned as a combatant in the war.

Living through War

CHILDREN ON THE BATTLE FIELD

All armies in the Great War used kid soldiers. In the beginning of the war. The enthusiasm to join the battle was so great that young boys (and even girls) could hardly be stopped to enlist.Recruiting Officers in all countries closed their eyes when eager children clearly under the required age - 18 years old - showed up to join their armies.At the end of the war children were even more welcome in the ranks, as the Great Mincing Machine continued to require human bodies with an astonishing need.Hardly trained the kids were send to the trenches in Belgium, France, Russia and Turkey, where they mingled with the older soldiers - and died with them.

Ship Boy

England found a boy hero in Jack Cornwall, ship boy on board of the light cruiser HMS Chester, where he served as a sight-setter.During the Battle of Jutland in June 1916 the Chester was hit and put afire by German shells. In the chaos one gun kept firing at the Germans. It was manned by Jack Cornwall, aged 16 years and 4 months.Jack was mortally wounded but kept on firing until he died. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.Newspapers and magazines took possession of the boy as these pictures depict.

Place Fillers

Although every country had underage solders in their army, the propaganda often used enemy boy soldiers to prove how weak the foe was. These pictures of captured German soldiers was published in America (in Leslie's

Weekly) with the following caption: Boy Prisoners Taken By The French

It has been said wars are fought by boys and military experts agree that the best soldiers are men in their early twenties, but a glance at these youthful prisoners convinces one that Germany is drawing soldiers from among

the fifteen and sixteen year old boys of the empire to fill the places of the thousands of older men killed or captured.

CHILD SOLDIERS EXECUTED

This is the gravestone of Herbert Morris, a black war-volunteer, executed by his own troops.Morris enlisted in Jamaica when he was 16 years old. He was shipped to the battlefields in Flanders where, according to his superiors, he 'behaved well'. A year later, building parapets around heavy guns which were firing continuously, his nerves broke down. He ran for two days. Then he was arrested.He was sentenced to be shot at dawn, because of 'desertion from active service near the frontline'.Herbert Morris was executed, in a coal-shed in the Belgian village of Poperinge, on 20 September 1917. He had just turned 17.

Being a kid was no excuse whatsoever during WWI.

James Crozier from Belfast enlisted when he was 16. The boy became infatuated during the battle of the Somme, ran away and got arrested. A few hours before he was to be 'shot at dawn', his comrades gave him so much rum that he passed out.James had to be carried to the execution place. He was tied to a pole, blindfolded and shot - but the firing-squad missed on purpose. The commanding officer then shot the boy through the head.

Until the present day the British War Office, and today's Ministry of Defense, maintain that soldiers who enlisted underage during the First World War, had only themselves to blame if their conduct caused them to be court martialed and sentenced to death.Furthermore the MOD states that the contemporary age of criminal responsibility was 14 and that in civilian courts these young men could also have been sentenced to death for a capital offence.

UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

After the Great War there have been many attempts to put this to an end, and finally, on 2nd September 1990, the 'United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child' came into force.

Article 38 states:

1. States Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for rules of international humanitarian law applicable to them in armed conflicts which are relevant to the child.

2. States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities.

3. States Parties shall refrain from recruiting any person who has not attained the age of fifteen years into their armed forces. In recruiting among those persons who have attained the age of fifteen years but who have not attained the age of eighteen years, States Parties shall endeavor to give priority to those who are oldest.

4. In accordance with their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population in armed conflicts, States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure protection and care of children who are affected by an armed conflict.