from noon 28th september 1918 to noon 29th september 1918 the b.e.f's expenditure of ammunition fired in that 24hr period amounted to £3,871,000! There are a few reasons that so many boys were able to bypass the legal age limit for fighting overseas. Conscript forces became true ‘nations in arms’ in 1914-18. By that time he’d already fought in the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Melville Wood. 258 was the first number drawn. Wiki User Answered . 55% of male Italians and Bulgarians aged 18 to 50 were called to military service. Britain’s youngest WW1 soldier was a boy aged 12; ... “His story is quite phenomenal – not only did he enlist at the age of 12 and fight on the Somme at the age of 13, but he returned to service at the end of the First World War and worked in bomb disposal during the Second World War. Draft age is lowered to 18 On November 11, 1942, Congress approves lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to age 37. As the public became more aware of the scale of carnage and the brutality of the war, there was a swing in public opinion and many people began to demand that boy soldiers be removed from the front lines and sent home. As many as 250,000 boys under the age of 18 served in the British Army during World War One. Conscription started on 2nd March 1916. By the end of the First World War almost 1 in 4 of the total male population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had joined up, over five million men. If you were asked to picture an average sixteen-year-old British boy, you’d probably imagine a kid who goes to school from Monday to Friday, and who spends his weekends messing around on his phone, listening to music, playing on his Xbox One or PS4, and probably wasting a lot of time on social media. Sadly, many recruiters were motivated by pure greed, too. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! This article breaks down the military age limits for 2020 by branch. The mininim age you had to be was seventeen but some people lied about their age. The Average Soldier According to historian Bell I. Wiley, who pioneered the study of the Civil War common soldier, the average Yank or Reb was a ‘white, native-born, farmer, protestant, single, between 18 … The First ...read more, Exactly three years after the end of World War I, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is dedicated at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia during an Armistice Day ceremony presided over by President Warren G. Harding. The Soviet Union announces that, because of its opposition to the recent overthrow of the government of Chilean President Salvador Allende, it would not play a World Cup Soccer match against the Chilean team on November 21, if the match were held in Santiago.  The International ...read more, On November 11, 1978, a stuntman on the Georgia set of “The Dukes of Hazzard” launches the show’s iconic automobile, a 1969 Dodge Charger named the General Lee, off a makeshift dirt ramp and over a police car. Secondly, record-keeping was nowhere near as strict and comprehensive a hundred years ago as it is in today’s digital age, and bureaucracy was not nearly as pervasive as it is now, so it was a lot easier for young men to lie about their age at that time. They were paid two shillings and sixpence, equivalent to about £6 in today’s money, for every man that successfully signed up, so they could make a lot of money by letting in pretty much anyone who satisfied the physical requirements. True? It did not go well for the British and they suffered 50,000 casualties killed and wounded. It is a widely-known fact that most armies of the modern era have included a number of soldiers who were in their teens, having lied about their real age to bypass minimum age limits for soldiers, but what is perhaps not so widely-known is the massive scale at which this occurred, particularly in the First World War. It was, perhaps, Lewis stature that allowed him to fly below the radar. They asked for the LIMIT not the MINIMUM, so they want the maximum age. Age limit of WW1 soldiers? For instance, a veteran with 5 years of service, who is 30 years old with broken service time, often will be considered 25 and granted age waivers for certain groups in the military. The first ‘Boy Soldiers’ arrived in Europe in May 1915. There have in recent years been considerable press treatment of child soldiers. 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