Boy's Own War. G. S. Willmott

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      CONTENTS

      Introduction

      School Days

      Cricket is War

      The Spirit of ANZAC

      Sun Surf & Sex

      Feeling a Little Piste

      The Difference Being…

      They’re in the Army Now

      The Prodigal Son Never Returns

      Private Investigations

      Bulldog

      Where’s My Dad?

      To Catch a Thief

      Baby Boy Warrior

      ANZAC

      Father and Son

      The Rock

      Wild Rivers

      Forty Thousand Horsemen

      Beersheba

      Jungle Boy

      I Want to be Like My Dad

      Jungle Warfare

      Hitler’s Boys and Girls

      Loyalty to the Fuhrer

      United We Stand

      Benedict Arnold

      An Uncivil War

      Union Boys

      Rebel Yell

      March to the Beat of a Different Drum

      Chickamauga

      African Conflict

      Demonising the Innocents

      Boko Haram

      A Stolen Childhood

      Payback

      Suicide Boy

      Bibliography

      Copyright

      First published 2016 by Crabtree Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

      Copyright © Crabtree 2016

      ISBN 9781925281712 (pbk)

      ISBN 9781925281729 (ebook)

      Boy’s Own War is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

      Acknowledgements

      Jane Sexton for the toughest yet most thorough edit I have experienced.

      My wife, Anna Shearer for tolerance.

      JUST A BOY

      He left home

      To fight with men

      Just a boy

      Won’t come home again

      In the mud

      In Flanders Field

      He fell too soon

      But did not yield

      A boy so proud

      To die a man

      On foreign soil

      Was not the plan

      But fight he did

      Until his death

      The poppy remembers

      His last breath !

      Carolyn McAllan 21.9.15

      Introduction

      This book is about war; so how do we define war?

      “War is a state of armed conflict between autonomous or coalitions of such organizations. It is generally characterized by extreme collective aggression, destruction, and usually high mortality. The set of techniques used by a group to carry out war is known as warfare. An absence of war is usually called peace.

      While some scholars see warfare as a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, others argue that it is only a result of specific socio-cultural or ecological circumstances.

      In 2013 war resulted in 31,000 deaths down from 72,000 deaths in 1990. The death toll in 2014 would be even greater with the wars in Syria, Iraq and northern Africa raging. The deadliest war in history, in terms of the cumulative number of deaths since its start, is the Second World War, with 60–85 million deaths, followed by the Mongolian Conquests. Proportionally speaking, the most destructive war in modern history is the War of the Triple Alliance, which took the lives of over sixty per cent of Paraguay's population.

      In 2003, Richard Smalley identified war as the sixth (of ten) biggest problems facing humanity for the next fifty years. War usually results in significant deterioration of infrastructure and the ecosystem, a decrease in social spending, famine, large-scale emigration from the war zone, and often the mistreatment of civilians.

      ‘Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely military targets, and can result in massive civilian casualties’

      Wikipedia

      This definition does not mention children however, since time immemorial, children have been fighting along side the grown ups. During the age of chivalry, Pages as young as ten followed their masters into war particularly during the Crusades. Drummer boys marched in front of Napoleon’s army’s as they did leading the British into battle. Both the Union and Confederate armies also used them extensively during the American Civil War.

      The First World War was the first wholesale use of children, boys as young as twelve were fighting in the trenches.

      It is estimated over 700,000 boys under the age of eighteen fought coming from all sides with over 100,000 dying in the “War to End all Wars”.

      Although the same participation rate was not as great in the Second World War many still fought particularly from Germany. Hitler used his “Hitler Youth” as cannon fodder when the Russians were invading Germany and ultimately Berlin. It is estimated that close to 30,000 boys and girls lost their lives trying to defend Germany and their Fuhrer.

      So now that the world has learned from these ferocious wars and we have become much more sophisticated and knowledgeable does child exploitation in war still go on? Yes, unfortunately more now, than ever before.

      The use of child soldiers is far more widespread than many can believe; current estimates are that over 300,000 children under the age of eighteen are fighting with machine guns and machetes in war zones around the globe.

      It might be argued that eighteen isn’t that young, however the average age of these warriors is twelve. So far, the youngest captured fighting in Uganda was five. In Columbia a terrorist bomber was captured, he was seven.

      It’s not just boys fighting, 30% of the armies employing children also use girls, these girls are being used to fight in approximately fifty-five countries around the world.

      A frightening statistic is children currently serve in 40% of the world’s armed forces including rebel