A GREAT WAR 1914-15 TRIO, PLAQUE & SCROLL TO A GREATLY UNDER AGE SOLDIER.

18172. Pte. GEORGE DIXON.
'E' Company, 20th Bn MANCHESTER REGt.

IN FRANCE & DEAD AT 16. KILLED-IN-ACTION 25th MARCH 1917.

NOTE: Although the newspaper cutting shown here gives George as being 17 at the date of his death, he was almost certainly only 16. The 'giveaway' is the army burial record which gives 'Age Nil' !!! ...there are several other Manchester Regt lads recorded as being 17 shown on the same list, but with lads of 16 the army always omitted their true age on the records.George was killed while sheltering in a dug out which received a direct hit by an enemy shell. The two men killed with him were: 17621 Pte Arthur Firth & 17627 Pte John Foulkes.

Much has been made over recent years of the bare fact that many tens of thousands of boys who volunteered in late 1914 and onward for army service were in fact well underage. Many boys of 13 to 15 had joined up at local recruiting offices having all lied about their ages ( Including my own Grandfather who joined the Lincolnshire Regt aged 15 ).

Recruitment rules were simple. To enlist and fight abroad, you had to be nineteen or over. If you were eighteen, you could enlist but you had to remain in the UK until you were nineteen before being posted abroad. No one could join the army under the age of eighteen, but never the less, it is thought that over 250,000 underage boys were recruited and fought in France.

It was Liberal MP for Mansfield, Sir Arthur Markham's loan public voice that tried to persuade the War Office to tackle the issue and to secure the return of these tens of thousands of boys from the frontlines in France.

Here we have a typical and tragic case of the underage enlistment and death of young George Dixon who almost certainly enlisted at age 15, was in France in November 1915 and Killed-in-Action whilst still 16 on 25th March 1916.
George was born in the second quarter of 1899 which at the oldest makes him six days short of his 17th birthday on the day he was killed.

SCROLL PASTED ONTO CARD, MEDALS ARE MINT WITH ORIGINAL RIBBONS. PLAQUE EF & LIGHTLY CLEANED.COMES COMPLETE WITH MEDAL ISSUE LETTERS, PLAQUE COVER AND ROYAL LETTER.Also a unit photograph showing George and many of his clearly underage 'E' Company pals.At least half the faces on this picture are quite clearly well underage.Also included is a copy of the relevant war diary extract for the day of George's death showing that he and three of his mates were killed that day by German shelling.

A VERY RARE, COMPLETE & HISTORICALLY IMPORTANT GROUPING
£745