Boys and Propaganda

Boy Soldiers and Propaganda

This research was carried out by Lizzie Renfrey and Imogen Watkins of St Helen and St Katherine, Abingdon, as part of a project working with Julie Summers who curated the ‘Children and War’ exhibition.

The subject of boy soldiers is one that conjures up the ranks of young men who lied about their age to enlist in 1914 and 1915 to fight for King and Country.  Yet it was not unusual for boys to be engaged by the Army and Navy. 

The Army had a long tradition of boy drummers while the cavalry employed boy trumpeters.  For some boys, who had got into trouble with the Law, there was a choice for them between going to prison or ‘taking the option’ which meant agreeing to serve in the Forces. For those who took the option a life in the Army could offer them opportunities and adventure beyond their wildest dreams.  A photograph in the SOFO archives of a young lad sitting proudly on a horse, photographed in 1907 speaks of the pride that young men felt in the prospect of a life in the military.

The propaganda run by the government in the early years of the First World War appealed to young men’s sense of patriotism, which bordered on jingoism.  It was hugely successful and drew in boys as well as to young men.  According to the historian John Oakes in his ‘Kitchener’s Lost Boys’, up to 250,000 underage boys succeeded in slipping through the net, despite protests from many parties. 

Of those, thousands died and much of the pity of the First World War is directed at the lost generation of young men, those who had died young.  In the Second World War the government had no need for a general advertising campaign to recruit for the Forces as conscription had been introduced several months before the war broke out. 

What the poster campaigns during the Second World War fixed on was specific appeals.  The RAF appealed to young men’s sense of adventure and patriotism; the WAAF and ATS encouraged young women to think of contributing actively towards the war by enlisting.