Figure 1.--These northern Italian boys seem rather well-equipped for their war games. Note the destinctive helmets. The children are playing in the summer of 1918, a few months before the War ended. |
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Children's play was affected by the World War I, especially that of the boys. War games or variants like "cops and robbers" or "cowboys and Indians" are perenial favorites for boys. With the out
break of the War, war games became an obsession for many boys. This was fueled with the acquisition of uniforms and war memorbilia from fathers and brothers at
the front. Mothers must have had mixed feelings seeing their boys playing war, especially as so many had lost husbands and sons or other rekatives in the fighting. Parents did not intervene so much in children's play at the time. We do not know at this time to what extent the children's games varied from country to coutry.
Here we have few actual accountts, but have noted some interesting images. Some appear to be staged images so we are not sure to what extent they reflect actual play.
We note the main department stores offering army and sailor play costumes. Of cour sailor suits were already a style for boys, but by 1917 when America entered the War was mostly worn by younger boys.
We note a number of illustrations by Francisque Poulbot showing children at play during the War. There are also numerous postcards, but these are mostly saged scenes. Photographs sjow French childre playing, but it is often difficult to tell to what extent the photograghs have been staged. We suspect that a good indicator is the extent to which the children have been costumed. Unlike the post card scenes, we doubt if the boys had actual uniforms, but many may have acquired caps or even occassionaly helmets. Here we note that the girls' are commonly costumed in nurses' uniforms.
We note a lot of portraits of younger Germany boys wearing a range of military uniform items, especially the spiked helmets. The items often appear to be rather fancy. We are not sure to what extent they were worn for play.
These northern Italian boys seem rather well-equipped for their war games (figure 1). Note the destinctive helmets. The children are playing in the summer of 1918, a few months before the War ended.
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