Volunteering

Read the article: Volunteering

HE JOINED THE FORCES
AT 15 1/2 YEARS
AND DID HIS DUTY
TILL DEATH

RIFLEMAN ALBERT KNOWLES

Born in January 1899, Albert Knowles would have been fifteen and a half in July 1914. By implication therefore he joined up immediately on the outbreak of war. in August 1914. He was far too young. In theory you had to be eighteen before you could join the army and nineteen before you could serve abroad but in practice, in the early days of the war, if you said you were nineteen, and looked nineteen, the army took your word for it. Much is made of recruiting sergeants wilfully turning a blind eye to obviously underage boys but in fact, the army didn't want weaklings.: you needed to be able to march long distances, carrying your own equipment. But as I said, if you looked nineteen the army took your word for it.
Knowles obviously managed to convince the authorities. His medal card shows that he went to France in September 1915 when he would have been just over sixteen and a half. It was January 1918 before he became nineteen, by this time he had been in the army for over three years.
In March 1918 his eldest brother, Ernest, serving with the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards, died of wounds. Six months later, on 12 October, Albert was killed as the 16th Battalion King's Royal Rifle Corps tried to cross the River Selle.
For all that the end of the war was only a month away, for all that the Germans were already putting out peace feelers, their soldiers were still fiercely resisting allied attacks so that by noon on the 12th the 16th Battalion, which had been charged with taking the line of the Le Cateau-Solesmes railway and the surrounding high ground, had been forced to withdraw 'disorganised' with very high casualties.
Albert Knowles may have deceived the army authorities about his age but his mother put that right on his headstone. There's a sense of pride in her choice of words, not so much pride in his deception but in the fact that even though he was only fifteen he had wanted to do his duty, and that he continued to do it "till death". There is no inscription on his brother Ernest's headstone.

[Richard Emden's 'Boy Soldiers of the Great War' is the book to read on this subject.]

THEY ASKED FOR VOLUNTEERS
FOR FRANCE
OF COURSE I WAS ONE 8.9.14

PRIVATE FRANK LOKER

In the twenty-first-century there's a danger that this inscription might be taken the wrong way; it could sound as though the speaker was implying that he was a muggins for volunteering - "of course I was one". I am absolutely sure that this is not how Frank Loker's father, who chose the inscription, meant it. After all, Frank Loker wasn't the only one to volunteer in September 1914, his father, also called Frank Loker, volunteered on the 20 September, twelve days after his son.
Father had previously been a member of the 1st Volunteer Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment, so he was a returning soldier, which explains why the day after he volunteered he was promoted Company Quartermaster Sergeant.
The son, crossed to France on 14 February 1915 with the 1st Battalion Cambridgeshire Regiment. The Cambridgeshires served in France and Flanders throughout the whole war, acquitting themselves with distinction in the capture of the Schwaben Redoubt in October 1916. In September 1917 the battalion were in Flanders, they moved to Hill 60 on 2 September and Private Frank Loker was killed the next day.
Sergeant Major Frank Loker went to France with the 7th Battalion Leicestershire Regiment in July 1915. He remained in France until he was transferred to the reserve in February 1919. But I'm not sure that he came home even then because his address after the war was C/O War Graves Commission, St Omer, France. He may have become a gardener with the Commission, many old soldiers did, and why not when your son was buried in one of its cemeteries.

HE VOLUNTEERED
HE THOUGHT IT WAS HIS DUTY
HE DIED THAT WE MIGHT LIVE

PRIVATE JOHN THOMAS JARDINE

Mrs Robina D. Duncan of Waskada, Manitoba, Canada, chose this inscription. It's not been possible to discover who she was or how she knew John Jardine but it sounds as though she did know him because of her choice of words, "he thought it was his duty.
Jardine was born in Edinburgh in 1896 where in 1901 his father, Thomas, was a building contractor's book keeper. There is no sign of the Jardines in the 1911 census, were Thomas and his wife Agnes dead or had they emigrated to Canada?
Jardine served with the 8th Battalion Canadian Infantry and was killed on the 11 November 1916 in all probability when the 8th Battalion helped take Regina Trench during the Battle of the Ancre Heights since the action is one of their battle honours.
The final line of the inscription, 'he died that we might live', with it conscious reference to Christ's sacrifice, comes from 'Hail! - and Farewell!' in a collection of verse by John Oxenham entitled 'All's Well' Some Helpful Verse for These Dark Days of War. John Oxenham was the pseudonym of the novelist, poet and hymn writer William Arthur Dunkerley. During the war his self-published poetry sold hundreds of thousands of copies and provide the source for more than one headstone inscription.

They died that we might live, -
Hail! - And Farewell!
- All honour give
To those who, nobly striving, nobly fell,
That we might live!

That we might live they died, -
Hail! - And Farewell!
- Their courage tried,
By every mean device of treacherous hate,
Like King's they died.

Eternal honour give, -
Hail! - And Farewell!
- To those who died,
In that full splendour of heroic pride,
That we might live!

ENLISTED AUG. 12 1914
MOOSOMIN. SASK. CAN.

LANCE CORPORAL HENRY CHILTON

Lance Corporal Chilton, a Canadian-born homestead farmer from Moosomin, Saskatchewan, Canada was a very early volunteer.

HE RESPONDED TO
LORD KITCHENER'S APPEAL
AUGUST 1914
AND DIED FOR HIS COUNTRY

SECOND LIEUTENANT CHARLES EDWARDS

Lord Kitchener's appeal, his 'call to arms' on 11 August stated, "Your King and Country need you"

ONE OF THE FIRST 100,000
"THE CONTEMPTIBLES"
WHILE ENGLAND HAS SUCH SONS
SHE NEED FEAR NAUGHT

PRIVATE GEORGE KILPIN

The British Expeditionary Force that sailed for France in August 1914 was scarcely more than 100,000 strong. The Kaiser is said to have referred to it as a "contemptible little army". The survivors of this original force took a pride in referring to themselves as "The Old Contemptibles".