In World War 2
July 5, 2011 (Tuesday)
Calvin Graham was twelve years old in 1942 when he joined the United States Navy. Obviously, he was big for his age, so he told the recruiters he was 17. I can vouch for his being big for his age, because he was in the Sixth Grade in Sherman Elementary in Houston with Troy Conner and me. He signed up at the end of the school year, so I guess everyone assumed he had moved away when the fall school term resumed three months later. He had moved away, all right, to the Santa Cruz Islands and Guadalcanal, where he was wounded on board the USS South Dakota, receiving the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for his actions aboard that ship. When his age was revealed, he was stripped of his medals and put in the brig for three months and dishonorably discharged for lying about his age. In 1948 he joined the United States Marine Corps and served until he was injured in an accident in 1951. Before his death in Fort Worth in 1992, two presidents (Carter and Reagan) had signed papers restoring his honor and his disability benefits. He had spent his life trying to get that done. The Purple Heart was not restored. In 1988 a T.V. Movie, “Too Young the Hero,” starring Rick Schroeder, was made about him and his experiences. Read the Wikipedia article about him.Follow the links there to more information about the subject of underage military personnel.
In 2003, Chet Fleming wrote about an army of children — a group of boys and girls who fooled the U.S. government and joined the military before they were of legal age. “Somebody described us as a group of government-certified liars,” said Fleming. “That’s the only way we could get in.” The former Ohio resident was 16 when, while playing hooky from school with some buddies, he told an Army recruiting sergeant he was 18. He enlisted and later served in Korea. More than 50 years later, in 2003, Fleming — commander of the West Virginia Veterans of Underage Military Service — was trying to find others in the state like him.
According to an article in “The Leatherneck,” there likely were more than 200,000 underage veterans who joined the military during the World War II and Korean War eras. Most joined out of patriotism or to seek adventure. Others did so for financial reasons, said Ray Jackson, national commander of the Veterans of Underage Military Service, which was founded in 1991 in Maryland.
I’m fairly certain that, at 12 years of age, Calvin was the youngest.