Posts Tagged ‘youth’

Boys in their teens will fight in 1917

by on Monday, October 31st, 2016

(By Associated Press)

LONDON, Oct. 30—The war threatens soon to become a struggle between mere boys. The pace is said to be entirely too fast for the older men long to endure.

It is declared here that next year the Entente Allies will be facing boys of 17 in the German army.

General Sir Douglas Haig, commanding the British expeditionary forces, is said to have objected to the sending out of men of middle age. He wants young men of from 18 to 25. After the latter year it is said the fighting value of the human unit shows a rapid and steady decline.

The good soldier of today it seems must be of the age which excels in the more strenuous athletic games—the football player type. The older men have their place, but generally speaking it is said now to be in “the army behind the army”—the men back of the line, in the supply and transport divisions where the strain is not too great. These older men are too susceptible to trench diseases to be of great use on the firing line.

England already is registering boys born in 1899 preparatory to calling them up when they attain their eighteenth year.