[null and void]

Obama would still be there...

[sofaman]

Fanny Lewis. In Tooting.

Only in England.

[higgmeister]

A bump for King and Country to the brave young man from what little Brit is left in me after 10+ generations in the free colonies. Happy Armistice Day!

[TurboZamboni]

Somme, battle of the, 1916. When he became commander-in-chief, Haig wanted to advance from Ypres to liberate the Belgian coast. However, the allies had already concerted their operations for 1916, so he agreed to take part in an Anglo-French offensive further south, astride the river Somme, where the British and French armies met. This was part of a plan by which each of the allied armies would attack simultaneously and compel the Germans to sue for peace by Christmas 1916. Haig hoped that he would break through the German defences in a single day. But despite a lengthy bombardment, when his infantry advanced on 1 July, they suffered nearly 60,000 casualties and only dented the German line. The battle continued until mid-November, by which time the British had suffered approximately 400,000 casualties and advanced a maximum of only 8 miles.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Battle_of_the_Somme.aspx

On the first day of the battle, 20,000 British soldiers were killed, and around 40,000 were taken as prisoners of war or wounded quite badly.

[PghBaldy]

Here is the youngest American male to serve in WWII: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Graham

[RC one]

I have a WW1 era German “pickel” helmet that is so small it must certainly have been worn by a child. It has a big dent right in the front of it that looks like it came from a butt stroke.

[TomGuy]

Reminds me of a made-for-TV movie with Rick Schroder from 1988:

Too Young the Hero

The true story of Calvin Graham who at the age of twelve, but looking quite a lot older, succeeded in joining the navy during World War II. In spite of his young age, he received a purple.

The above is available on Netflix streaming.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

There was a great article in the May VFW magazine this past year of all the boy soldiers who served in the Civil War. In the article it talked about one boy (I can’t remember his name) who was only around 14 or 15 and won the medal of honor. Pretty impressive....

[Dogbert41]

My father-in-law went into the Royal Merchant Marines at 14 in 1939.

[SnuffaBolshevik]

When you check out the Daily Mail page on this kid, click on the hotlink to the story about the Belgian Army team that deals with WW1 shells being discovered almost daily.

Mustard, phosgene, HE and more. Plenty of good pics as well.