Boy Soldiers
A recruitment poster from the 1950s
Before the Second World War boys could enter the army as bandboys at the age of 14. A boy soldier of the time recalled
in his memoirs:
A bandboy's life was a hard one by today's standards. Most of the time we were confined to camp, being allowed a 36-hour pass (1pm Saturday to 8.30pm Sunday) on just one weekend a month. All our spare time was spent scrubbing and polishing the barracks and bulling our kit for inspection. We wore khaki serge service dress with hobnailed boots and tightly wound puttees.
Kit inspections were the horror of every week. Our kit had to be laid out on our beds in a specific pattern with everything squared off to look like it had been cast from concrete. Towels, socks, shirts etc were stuffed with plywood or stiff cardboard to ensure they conformed. Our best boots, with thirteen studs in each sole, had to be displayed with one upright and the other up-ended to show that the sole had been polished. If the slightest thing was deemed unsatisfactory the unfortunate owner might see all his precious kit thrown out of the window with the promise of a further kit inspection on Sunday morning. So bang went your precious weekend pass.
Dirty hands, fingernails etc were punished by scrubbing the miscreant. This involved a bath of cold water, lashings of scouring powder and a big stiff-bristled yard broom. Two of the biggest boys were detailed to carry out the scrubbing, only stopping when they raised blood. I kept myself very clean in those days.
A prewar army bandboy wearing khaki service dress with cloth puttees
Boy soldiers continued to wear khaki service dress until the 1960s, although the inconvenient puttees had been
discontinued. Whilst adult soldiers were clad in the utilitarian battledress, boys paraded in the much smarter
service dress, with its high-necked tunic, brass buttons and peaked cap.
A Junior Leader of the late 1950s recalls his uniform which
included no less than 52 pieces of brass to clean.
A group of army apprentices from 1959
Adult soldiers exchanged battledress for the more presentable new No 2 dress in the early 1960s, but the powers
that be then decided to put boy soldiers into the now obsolete 'BD'. A recruit of the time recalled in an article
in Soldier magazine:
Our generation of 'brats' (boy soldiers) had it hard by comparison with today's apprentices, but in turn much easier than those who went before us. In 1966 we endured being clad in battledress - that hated style of uniform, designed we felt by sadists, with the texture of sandpaper that tore at the skin. Blanco was the bane of many a young life as new recruits struggled to coat the webbing belt and gaiters to a consistent colour. Life became so much more bearable once barrack room trousers and woolly pully jumpers came along.
Battledress-clad Junior Leaders, pictured in 1964
By the late 1960s boy soldiers had at last graduated to the smart No2 dress.
This uniform, with its 'staypressed' cloth and 'staybright' buttons and badges, is much easier to maintain than
the scratchy serge uniforms which preceded it, as well as being rather more comfortable. Nowadays there is no excuse
for not looking smart on parade.
