Thread: ...

...How old did you have to be join the army during World War 1? Hmm yes.
Were doing this at school... and we've been told 50000 times.. but I cant remember lmao

And if you want to be extra helpfull you can add random bits of ww1 info :P
haha

You had to be 18. But you could join as young as 16 if your parents gave permission. But younger could and did lie and enlist. But things were not so strictly defined back then. Age or disabled wise. I can recall old Life magazines from WWII with ad's showing navy admirals wearing hearing aids and many AAAF generals who were pilots in the golden age of open cockpits and Biplanes had severe hearing problems. Including Claire Chenault who commanded the Flying Tigers. Before WWI there were even military jobs where minors were preferred. We had powder monkeys in the Navy up until at least the Spanish-American War. Remember the famous painting "The spirt of 76"? The young drummer boy, old man. and normal aged bandsmen? Andrew Jackson served in combat during the Revolution at age fourteen. Once he had the chance to shoot and kill the brutual British calvary leader Bansttere Tarleton. Tarleton was the orginal model for the green dragoon in Mel Gibson's movie "The Patriot" a few years ago. Jackson was on couriour duty carrying dispatches and passed up the chance. But he always half regretted it all his life. Johnny Clem became famous as Johnny Shiloh at age nine...There were deaf in earlier wars too. It is likely most troops exposed to battle noise back then had some degree of hearing loss and diseases caused it as well. In the Civil War though, there are known instances of born deaf or early deafened serving in someway... We live in a regulated age today and in some ways have lost earlier freedoms.

you still had to be 18 but many men joined when they were as young as 14

you still had to be 18 but many men joined when they were as young as 14

18 was the minimum age. There were always stories about even younger males lying about their age to get in, and some were successful. This wasn't a great problem though. Young men lying about their age in WW II was indeed a more widespread problem.