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Summary of
Press reports dated 1915
JAMES LOCK : SECOND
HAMPSHIRE REGIMENT
SOLDIER AT 15
Among the soldiers
landing in Gallipoli in May 1915 was a 15 year-old
boy named James Lock and it was not until he had been
wounded several times and sent back to England that
‘the authorities’ learned that their eager young recruit
who had volunteered at the outbreak of the First World
War was not 18 years old, as he had said, but a boy
of 14 who had just left school. Lock came of a ‘soldiering
family’ was determined to become a soldier himself
and as soon as he had left school at 14 badgered his
mother to write to the officer commanding the regiment
in which his late father had served, asking to be
allowed to join as a boy member of the band. His mother
agreed to do this but in the meantime Lock could not
contain his impatience. Without waiting for the promised
‘first vacancy’ in the band, he presented himself
at the Hampshire recruiting centre and gave his age
as 18. As Lock was 5’8” tall without his shoes, the
harassed recruiting officer was easily deceived and
Lock was soon training on the Isle of Wight.
He reveled in shooting
practice and eventually qualified as the crack shot
of the company, earning an extra sixpence per day
as a qualified marksman. He spent three months on
the Island, was to have been sent to the Western Front
in France but at the last moment was drafted to the
Second Hampshires in Gallipoli, now aged 15.
A quaintly worded report
of his story at the time says that” his mother debated
whether it would be wise to let so young a boy to
go to face the difficulties which it was known older
men had to encounter in Gallipoli” - something of
an understatement : but Lock had not done a man’s
training for nothing and went out in May with the
force which landed at Suvla bay, and two hours after
landing, with a large number of his comrades still
on board, his Troopship, the ’King Edward’ was torpedoed
and sunk
The position taken
up by the force to which Lock was attached was found
to be untenable and they re-embarked to go further
down the Peninsula. They arrived off the coast near
Achi Baba and went ashore at night to move into the
trenches. Of this manoevre Lock said, in 1915, “We
were aboard ship in the evening, and next morning
we were defending the first line trenches. Had to
land at night because of the shelling in the day time”.
His force returned
to Suvla Bay for another landing : “It was just a
case of tumbling overboard into the mud and wading
ashore as best we could. Full kit, of course. We got
some way inland before they spotted us, and then the
fun began”. Later they returned to Achi Baba. This
was a disastrous battle for the 2nd Hampshires and
their losses were heavy. Lock was wounded six times
by shrapnel and had a bullet from a Turkish sniper
struck him behind the right ear. Along with other
wounded he was shipped to Alexandria where he remained
for two days before being sent on to England. Here
the bullet (eventually made into a broach for his
mother) was finally extracted. Lock’s mother this
time put her foot down and let the authorities know
how old he was. In fact, her soldier son was faced
with the anomaly of a boy drawing a man’s pay they
discharged him
Lock was still anxious
‘to do his bit’ until he could join up again at 18,
he worked at the Army stables at Chilcombe. His exploit
is more amazing in that, as a child, he had undergone
numerous operations to cure a spine curvature and
at one stage doctors had declared that he would always
be deformed. Fortunately they were proved wrong.
Footnote:
James Lock died peacefully in The Royal Hospital Chelsea
as a Chelsea Pensioner in 1977 aged 77
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