Child Soldiers Who Fibbed to Fight

Growing up in a time of heroics and drama, George Brouse desperately longed to defend his country. But he was three years shy of the legal enlistment age.

So he lied about his age and joined the Army anyway, and in 1943, 15-year-old George Brouse found himself in Tunisia, fighting Nazi Germany.

“I don’t know whether it was just because they were careless, or whatever, but they didn’t find out until I was [overseas],” he said.

Brouse, now 69 and living in Philadelphia, is far from the only one who fibbed to fight; an estimated 25,000 veterans--most of them from World War II--did it.

More than 50 years later, many still hold the mistaken belief that they could lose their veterans’ benefits if their secret is revealed.

The Veterans of Underage Military Service, founded in 1978, is trying to bring those former child soldiers together. The group’s 1,200 members want to provide support to their peers who grew up on the front lines and to dispel the myth that the government will punish their dishonesty.

Only a dishonorable discharge ordered by the Department of Defense can change a veteran’s benefits, said Veterans Affairs spokesman Ken McKinnon. And the Department of Defense has no plans to pursue men and women who served so long ago, added spokeswoman Monica Aliosio.

“We were all gung-ho. . . . Everybody couldn’t wait to get into the service,” said Stanley Drewniak of Manchester, N.H. Drewniak, now 71, was 16 when he enlisted in the Navy.

Youths of 17 were allowed to join the military with their parents’ permission. But recruiters looking for able-bodied soldiers often turned a blind eye to age restrictions, McKinnon said. Boys as young as 12 signed up.

“During the war, everyone was patriotic, and we thought we were doing some good,” said Harry Wallace, of Durham, N.H. “I was in high school, and I saw the other kids going and wondered why I couldn’t.” Wallace, now 69, was 16 when he joined the Merchant Marine.

Although going to war seemed like high adventure, child soldiers probably suffered more than older recruits.

“One of the issues . . . is, as children, they found themselves in horrendous situations,” said Edward Kubany, a clinical psychologist with the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

But there are no studies to prove that they suffered more than older combatants; there are only memories, tempered by a half-century.

To fool the more vigilant recruiters, most youths dropped out of school, altered their birth certificates and then persuaded or tricked their parents into signing permission slips. Others avoided their parents entirely.

“One guy called it ‘the two-bit hedge.’ His father wouldn’t sign for him, so he went downtown and got a hobo,” Brouse said. “He bought him a few beers and got him to sign.”

But overcoming the military’s height and weight restrictions demanded greater creativity.

“To get in, you had to be 110 pounds. So that day, I ate four or five pounds of bananas and just tipped the scale,” said Frank McNeil, 69, of Portsmouth, N.H., who joined the Navy when he was 16. “I hate bananas now.”

McNeil said his diminutive size made surviving boot camp the most challenging part of his military career. Most of his peers were at least five years older and considerably larger than he was. As a result, the only sleeping space he got on the train ride to camp was in the overhead luggage rack.

Drewniak said his youth was an advantage.

“The good point was that I was smarter than the rest, though only for the reason I had just got out of high school,” he said. “I knew how to study. . . . These other guys had been out of school for two or three years. They’d lost it.”

Their age-related mishaps often entertained the other soldiers.

Wallace said one of his first assignments was aboard a hospital ship. While it was docked in Galveston, Texas, a teacher brought her class aboard for a tour. As they were leaving, the woman mistook Wallace for one of her students and refused to get off the ship without him. It took one of the senior officers to convince her that the boy was a member of the crew.

Although they looked young, the underage soldiers grew up fast, said McNeil. And they knew they were missing out on the lives their friends at home were enjoying.

“You go from raising hell with the kids on the corner to somebody shooting at you,” McNeil said.

In addition to the dangers of war, the boys also risked being caught in their lies. Depending on how young they were when caught, that meant anything from being dismissed and sent home to being court-martialed and dishonorably discharged for fraudulent enlistment.

Brouse said he was caught when appendicitis sent him to a military hospital in Italy and his doctor learned his real age. But he said the man was sympathetic and put him on a medical leave that did not end until after his 17th birthday.

This sort of tacit official consent was common, Drewniak said.

“At that time, it was the right thing to do,” he said. “I don’t say you should do that all the time, but I didn’t hurt anybody. I think I helped myself; I helped my country. . . . I’m glad I did what I did.”