So he lied about his age and joined up. He was sixteen.
He wasn’t the only one. In the early years of the war, the need for recruits was so high that it’s thought recruiting officers often turned a blind eye or even encouraged boys to lie about their age. Fred joined the Seaforth Highlanders and, along with his best friend Fraser, travelled from his home in South London to train in the Scottish Highlands with his regiment. From there, he wrote his funny, cheerful letters home several times a week, describing the food, his fellow soldiers and his excitement at being issued with a kilt as part of his uniform. Now, when I re-read those letters, I try and imagine the smiling fluffy-haired old man in the yellow jumper who I remember, as the cheeky ‘Cockney’ (which was what the Scottish recruits called him) who wrote them.
I’m very glad Fred did write those letters and that someone (I like to think it was his poor, worried mum) typed them out and preserved them so carefully. Because Fred’s letters are the reason I became interested in the boy soldiers of the First World War and found out about Valentine Joe.
Valentine Joe Strudwick was a real person. He was born on Valentine’s Day 1900, in Dorking, Surrey. His dad was a gardener and his mum earned money by doing people’s washing. Joe left school at thirteen and worked for his uncle who was a local coal merchant. And then, in August 1914, everything changed. War was declared with Germany and, just like my grandfather, Joe joined up.
The date was January 1915 and he was fourteen.
My grandfather was lucky. Before his regiment was sent overseas to fight, he caught pneumonia from marching around in the snow wearing his much-loved kilt. An army doctor realised he was underage and sent him home to London.
Joe wasn’t lucky.
After a few weeks’ training he was sent to Belgium where his two best friends were killed and he was gassed. After recovering in hospital in England, he went back to the Front and on 14 January 1916, exactly one month before his sixteenth birthday, he was killed.
Joe is buried at Essex Farm Cemetery, near Ieper, where you can go and put celandines on his grave.
Rebecca Stevens
Brighton, 2014
Text © Rebecca Stevens 2014
First paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2014
This electronic edition published in 2014
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Cover and interior design by Helen Crawford-White
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PB ISBN 978-1-909489-60-8
eISBN 978-1-909489-61-5
Valentine Joe Page 13