They Did Not Grow Old: Teenage Conscripts on the Western Front 1918

by Tim Lynch

In June 1918, 130 teenagers arrived in France as just another draft of replacements among the thousands sent to reinforce the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front. Within the next five months, one in four would be dead, and over half of them wounded. This is the story of the lives and deaths of these ordinary young men in an unimaginable war. Looking beyond the war as portrayed by poets and playwrights, Tim Lynch tells the story of Britain's true Unknown Soldiers—the teenage conscripts who won the war only to be forgotten by history. These were not the naive recruits of 1914 who believed it would all be over by Christmas, but young men who had grown up in wartime: men who knew about the trenches, the gas, and the industrialized slaughter but who, when their time came, answered their country's call anyway. For the first time, following the experiences of a typical reinforcement draft, this book explores what turned men so often dismissed as "shirkers" into a motivated, efficient, and professional army; it also reminds us that in the cemeteries of France and Flanders, behind every headstone is a personal story.

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2013

Reviews

[David Bell]

In all the recent WW1 writing, with so much emphasis on the 'Lions led by Donkeys' and patriotic fervour of the opening days of war and the disasters of the Marne and Somme, it's interesting to see a book that concentrates on the conscripts (who formed the body of the British Army by the end of the war). What's especially fascinating is that Lynch goes into the deeper history of the resolutely working class 19
year olds' lives and what forces in British society and history shaped their characters. It's pretty grim reading- you stood more chance of surviving the trenches than you did actually living past 10 years old in the shitholes of Victorian Northern factory towns, and indeed, a lot of the soldiers were actually healthier in uniform than they'd ever been back at home. Until they got blown up/shot/gassed or died of Flu. Recommended.