Hi, I'm Indy Neidell, and this is another exciting episode of 'Out of the Trenches',
where I sit here, in the Chair of Wisdom,
which has nothing to do with the Emilio Estevez movie of the same name.
I'll sit here in the Chair of Wisdom, and answer all of your questions about the First World War.
♪ ['Out of the Trenches' intro theme] ♪
Armand Massimini writes:
Thank you.
I'm gonna quote Motörhead here:
Never quoted Motörhead in this show before. Okay.
In the craze of the first months of the war,
and the flood of volunteers on all sides,
it was often hard to keep track of the ages of soldiers.
A lot of passionate young boys who maybe wanted to prove themselves, or,
be part of something big, or just believed the ideas of the heroism that was to come,
wrote their names down, and lied about their ages.
There's the story of John Condon, who was maybe the youngest of them all.
He was killed at Ypres at age 14,
along with a lot of other 15 and 16 year-old boys who wanted to be soldiers.
Another problem, for the British anyhow,
was that British recruitment officers
got paid a bonus for every soldier they enlisted,
so many didn't check twice when you said
you wanted to enlist and you were old enough.
Germany had a similar problem.
Ypres was often portrayed in the war in Germany– after, though– in the after-war period,
as the 'Kindermord'—the Murder of Children—
as there were a lot of German regiments of mostly young students
around 18 years old that were just obliterated there.
Near the end of the war, the shortage of men for combat was such that, by 1918,
you see a lot of young men in the photographs of the trenches—
and I'm guessing you guys are going to insert some photographs of the trenches here.
You see a lot of young men in the photographs of the trenches,
and many of those guys are obviously too young to be soldiers in the first place.
Sam Haley writes:
The notification—the son, the brother,
or the father of the family was killed in action—
was often not much more than a telegram.
Sometimes, the mailmen would carry it to the front door of the family.
In smaller villages, it might be the local police chief, or some representative of the Postal Service,
or even the government, to add at least some dignity to the small notice.
Sometimes, nothing more than the handwritten, "We regret to inform you …," the date and the place of death.
Sometimes, they would write something about the circumstances of the individual deaths,
like if the soldier in question saved his comrades, or if his remains were buried where he fell.
Those handwritten telegrams would reach the family, often within a few days after the soldier was confirmed killed.
If the dead soldier was a high-ranking officer, his family was usually informed by military personnel or staff colleagues.
Ryan Flower writes:
Most countries have official organizations that collect the data of fallen soldiers, and take care of the war graves.
They also provide you the information if you're looking for fallen relatives in their data lists.
Soldiers' bodies from the war, though, are still found today,
sometimes by amateurs, or military collectors who—unfortunately—make it often impossible to identify the remnants.
Oh, and um– wait …
"Dear Will Ortiz, you are wrong." —Ryan
Okay, that's it for today. But if you'd like to learn more about the Kindermord at Ypres,
you can check out our episode about that right here.
Don't forget to subscribe, and like us on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram,
and follow me around the streets … Yeah, do all those things. See you next time!