Children In The First World War: A look at how youngsters were so terribly affected

DOING THEIR BIT

The war brought excitement and fear to Britain’s children with masses of air-raid warnings, drills and food shortages that soon became a part of their everyday lives. Thus, they began to feel like they should “do their bit” towards the war effort and soon were right in the thick of it.

SWEETS

Since Britain imported all its sugar, people were encouraged to do without it and eating sweets was even seen as unpatriotic. Looking for an alternative to sugar, adults offered the dubious treats of chocolate biscuits made from a mix of flour, cocoa, butter, ground rice, sieved boiled potatoes, egg and treacle.

RATIONS AND ALLOTMENTS

Children were encouraged to cultivate their own vegetables at school and many would have had their own little corner of the school garden. During 1917 the government asked children to collect horse chestnuts for munition making and blackberries for jam for soldiers – for which they were paid 3d (just over 1p) per pound.

Children began to work on the land by helping to bring in the harvest or growing vegetables on allotments either at home or in school.

Because of food shortages and rations, children were often urged to help save food. The Win-The-War Cookery Book declared: “The child who saves bread is a soldier too.” The main idea was not just to encourage children to eat less but to teach them that eating slowly was the best way to preserve their health and conserve food.

RECRUITS

With an increase in demand for recruits, boys, lying about their age, soon joined their fathers, uncles and elder brothers to fight for their country. At that time most people didn’t have birth certificates so it was easy to lie about one’s age.

However, after Private John Condon, aged 14, was killed in the Second Battle of Ypres, in May 1915 – when the Germans used poison gas for the first time – there was clearly a need to organise conscription better.

Therefore, National Registration was introduced in 1916 where adults were issued with identity cards. In this way the flood of underage soldiers was stopped.

SCHOOLS

Wartime conditions made the work of schools especially difficult.

Many male teachers had either volunteered or were called up for military service and as the war went on were soon replaced by women or retired men. Food sacrifices had to be made all across the country and in boarding schools too where all sugar in tea, cakes and jam was soon given up.

Many types of war work was done in schools. The girls knitted “comforts” – scarves, socks, balaclava helmets, etc – to send to the troops while some near military camps undertook the mending of uniforms. Others collected jam, chocolate, books and other comforts to be sent.

With the ever-present risk of air raids, drills were regularly held in schools. Pupils were taught to lie under their desk. The threat was real. On June 13, 1917, during the first daylight raid on London, a bomb fell on Upper North Street primary school in Poplar. It killed 18 children, most of them aged between four and six.

THE SCOUTS

Youth organisations played a great part in the war effort too and Boy Scouts provided patrols to guard the railways and watch the coasts as well as to sound the all-clear as trumpeters.

The Scouts also took on air-raid duties such as aircraft spotting and reporting as well as escorting people to air raid shelters. Each year on Empire Day (May 24) and at Christmas, schoolchildren would collect tobacco and comforts such as footballs, books or dart boards for soldiers and sailors, while Christmas parcels were sent out to the school’s old boys or alumni serving in the forces.

PLAYTIME

Popular street games included the timeless hide-and-seek, It (and all its other variations such as bulldog and sticky toffee), skipping, hopscotch, football, cricket, running races, etc.

One popular game was, as ever, “War”. Better-off children might have small uniforms and pop-guns but poorer youngsters crafted caps from newspapers, swords and guns from sticks and the military band was ingeniously made up of old biscuit-tin drums and penny whistles. The only problem was that nobody really wanted to play the Germans.

TOYS

Before the war Germany had been the world’s most important producer of children’s toys, exporting to the rest of Europe and the US. When war began, German goods were shunned, including old favourites such as the famous Steiff Bears.

British-made war-related toys were soon in the shops. Toy soldiers in red coats had long been popular, now they were dressed in khaki, and there were pull-along dreadnought battleships, field guns and howitzers, Maxim machine guns, armoured motor cars, horse-drawn Red Cross wagons and even complete field hospitals.

CLOTHES

By 1917 cloth shortages meant that patched clothes (once only seen on the poor) were now becoming increasingly worn by the middle classes. Standard cloth, which was given by the government for use in clothing for poorer classes, quickly gained a bad reputation.

After just a few washes the fabric became blanketed in little balls of fluff and the dye was notoriously poor as it often turned to a muted shade of dull purple no matter what colour it had started out.

HOLIDAYS

Resorts on the south and east coasts became the primary targets of sea raids so many people went further north, or to the west coast, for a seaside holiday.

Christmas, especially in the early years of the war, became a sober affair and food shortages meant sumptuous festive meals were out of the question.

Despite these hardships, for many children the best Christmas present came in the form of a week’s Christmas leave for dad who would come back just in time for the “Wartime Christmas Pudding” – and finally there’d be something to celebrate.

Extract by AKARSHANA BHATT *To order Children In The First World War by Mike Brown (Amberley, £8.99) with free UK delivery call the Express Bookshop with your card details on 01872 562310. Or send a cheque/ PO made payable to The Express Bookshop to Mike Brown Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth TR11 4WJ or visit expressbookshop.co.uk