Youngest Fighting Soldier in World

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1076, 13 September 1930, Page 18

Youngest Fighting Soldier in World

Served With British Troops at Age of Nine

WAR hero at nine years Sounds almost unbelievable, doesn't it? But not im P° ssi ble, as the story of one, Francis Jones, late of the 10th British Hussars, goes to show. Francis recently went to Canada with a gx’oup of young farm immigrants taken out under the British Empire Settlement Scheme. His destination was Norfolk County, where he was taken in charge by the district agent. A few days after his arrival he was invited on 24 hours’ notice to take part in a boxing show staged by the local Rotary Club. He was pitted against one of Ontario’s best young fighters. The bout was a whirlwind, largely due to Jones’s aggressiveness, and at its conclusion the referee, presented the lad with a silver trophy for the gamest loser. But let Francis fell briefly the story of his life of adventure, of those years of action ami thrills such as few men enjoy in a lifetime: “I was born aboard my father's ship at Georgetown. South America, in the ! year 1906. My mother died when 1 was very young. As far back as I can | remember I was aboard ship with my father, travelling to all corners of the earth. When the war broke out in 1911 our ship was commandeered for Government service. My father would have taken me back to England if it had been possible, but he was sent on a trip through the Mediterranean and T went with him. We were in tlie Mediterranean in 1915. One night we were attacked by a submarine and our ship torpedoed. Most of the crew, including my lather, were lost. They put a life-saving belt around me and tossed me overboard. My head struck something hard when 1 hit the water. When I awoke I was with the British Army in Mesopotamia. “I had always been longing for adventure and this looked like my big opportunity. The soldiers were good ! to me and during the fighting that | ensued I -would car;/ water to them, run messages, carry out spying operations and otherwise make myself useful. Finally I was wounded in the right shoulder during a particularly strong offensive by tha Turks and was

taken prisoner. They did not keep a very close watch on me, probably because my size and youthful appearance were disarming. I watched my chance after I had recovered from the effect of the wound and within about three months from the time of my capture, I escaped. “The next year, when I was ten, they sent me with an ambulance corps into Russian Turkestan. The Bolsheviks captured me after I had suffered further wounds. For weeks I was confined in a hospital, but all the time i was planning to escape. As with the Turks, they did not guard me carefully, and I had no trouble in making another getaway. It was adventure 1 was after, and now, when I look back upon those years. I realise that I did not appreciate the dangers which I was incurring. “Then, at the end of the war, Cap-

tain Vines adopted me, and I went with the British Army on its trip to India, I was there two years, then returned to England, and fiaallv

achieved my great ambition of joining np with the Tenth British Hussars. I had been with them eight years when I resigned to come to Canada.” He has little desire to recount the story over and over again, perhaps because he realises that many sceptics will discount its credibility. But he does carry with him the official record of the British War Office, which sets down in black and win the outline of the boy’s part in the Great War. t Dated July 7, 1921, it reads:— “Not many who have survived the Great War have had more adventures or travelled farther than this lad of 15 years, Francis Jones. His stop’which is vouched for by authorities after searching inquiry, covers * longer period of war experience and a bigger stretch of the far-flung fighting line than the majority of veterans. Yet he is now only 15 years and four months old. “In the very early years of his life he was away at sea with his father, who was a master mariner. In 191 k when war broke out, he was in Sev York. Early in 1915. when the Allies Armada mustered for the GalliP o ’ 1 hazard, his father’s ship, now in Jj lo service of Briti in, was torpedoed. The boy was one of the few survivors. He was put ashore somewhere in tamia, and kindly British soldiers took him in charge. . “He accompanied the troops in thei march to Bagdad, where for a time n was in hospital, and then went o with the British troops to B®*®' l ' Here he became attached to tJI Forty-eight Ambulance Corps, accompanied the unit to Russian Tukestan, and in the hard fighting “ bore his part bravely, carrying to the men who fell, until he himse . a mere child, was thrice wounded. “After being discharged from British hospital at Kuskak, he * adopted by Captain R. G. Vines, Twigworth Court, Gloucester, ‘ succeeded in getting him taken on strength of his regiment as a pr iv follower. With this regiment trekked the whole way through , sia to India, a journey that cceap 56 day*.”