Your Country Needs You!

Herbert Kitchener: the famous face of "Your Country Needs You!" recruitment poster

The recruiting Seargent's call roused the majority of men.  There was a rush to join up by the young and old alike.  All eager for the chance to fight for their country.

On this page and in Life in the trenches, The Wounded and Obituaries and Letters local memories of those heady patriotic days, the grim realities of combat and the impact on those left behind are explored.

You can download Your Country Needs You! and its accompanying pages by clicking here (PDF format).

... the year was 1914, the First World War had begun and my mates and fellow workers were leaving one by one to join the forces. I felt alone and somehow ashamed because I was too young to join. Of course, that was nothing to be ashamed of but, as always, I was perhaps over-sensitive. I suppose I still am.

We lived at 74 Hanover Terrace by then, and I used to walk all the way home from Blatchington Road, along Church Road to the Clock Tower, then Queen's Road, Trafalgar Street, and from there, home. I wish I could do it now! Anyway, one Wednesday on my half-day off, I suddenly made up my mind, and went into a Recruiting Office which had been opened in Church Road.

I do not think I can say that it was all patriotism, but my mates had gone, and I had the feeling that I was regarded as a kid, too young to do what others were doing. Mind you, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for.

Inside the office there was a Recruiting Sergeant and an Officer, as well as a Medical Officer. I was really scared, but the Sergeant asked me what I wanted, I looked so young. Then I said that I wanted to join up, and he looked at me as if I should still be in my cradle. I suppose he was not far wrong! He asked my age and I boldly said "18 years." He looked at me with a smile, and asked "Does your mother know that you are 18?" Then he said "All right, son,18 it is." He took my name, and passed me over to the MO who had me strip naked, examined and passed me. The Officer then made me take the Oath of Allegiance and there I was, a soldier at 15 3/4.
George Parker - A Tale of a Boy Soldier

When the First World War broke out I was fifteen years old and working as a paint maker with three friends I had known from school. They were slightly older than me and thought that they would go down to the recruiting office at East Ham, although they were all under age. I had no intention of joining up and the recruiting officer told me to "go home to my mother", but the others said that unless I was recruited they wouldn't join up. I pretended that I was seventeen and eighteen next birthday, which was soon.
John R Morris in Blighty Brighton

I was an apprentice with the Brighton & Hove General Gas Company but I thought that I would go to the recruiting office and join up. The recruiting office was at the Royal Pavilion and the officer gave me a shilling to go and get a copy of my birth certificate. I wasn't quite 18, but they still accepted me, I was sent to Chichester and then to Suffolk, to join the mounted brigade. I thought "mounted" meant we would be with horses, but we were all issued with bicycles. I was an officer's servant in Suffolk. We did coast patrol at night.
George Morgan in Blighty Brighton

Eventually it became evident that we were all either going to be conscripted into the army or flung into jail. I had to make a decision. One of my young brothers was seriously ill, and my half-brother Billy was in the army. I knew my mother was not anxious that I should go. I thought it over. I, who loved the sun, the open-air life, and freedom, was appalled at the idea of being penned in a prison cell. I took what was really the cowardly way out. I decided to join the army. I told an elderly man living in the house, and said I was going to join a certain regiment whose headquarters were near at hand. "No," he said indignantly, "You don't want to join any riff-raff, join a crack regiment, join the London Rifle Brigade."
Jack Cummins - The Landlord Cometh

In the 1914-18 war, all the men were called up even if they were over fifty. They weren't only called up, they went voluntarily, with all the enthusiasm one could ever imagine. They thought they were really fighting for England . There were only old men left to work in the factories, and women.
John Langley - Always a Layman

My father was 39 or 40 and was not called up, but he volunteered in 1916. He worked for a firm of estate agents called Dewdney and Collins at the top of St James's Street and his boss volunteered so I think he felt he should as well. As he was older he was not sent overseas but joined the Royal Flying Corps as a member of the ground staff and went to the North of England. We didn't have the same worry as those with fathers overseas, but there were bombs where he was, and some of his friends were killed.
Margery Goble in Blighty Brighton

By 1916 thousands of soldiers were being called to the services. My father, foreseeing this, learned to drive a van. Footslogging and trench warfare did not appeal to him at all. He was 'called up' that year, joined the Royal Army Service Corps and drove a lorry taking supplies and ammunition to the front lines in France and Belgium.
Marjory Batchelor - A Life Behind Bars