Figure 1.--Here are two brothers at the Duke of York's Royal Military School, Dover in 1940. The boy on the right is Art Cockerill. .

Art Cockerill who is pictured here has published some fascinating books and articles about boys in the military. One of those books is Sons of the Brave, The Story of Boy Soldiers. It is about the topic of boy soldiers in the British and Canadian armies, and not specifically about the Duke of York's School.

School Experiences

Art tells us about the image here, "The photograph here is of my younger brother Fred and myself in 1940 during WorkdWar II. Fred is seated. He joined the Duke of York's that same year. I am the boy standing; I'm wearing a 'good conduct' stripe on my left arm, one given for each year of crime-free service. It is a studio photograph taken in Northampton, England. In my book, the group of four, two soldier boys, two sailors, are we four siblings of the Cockerill clan taken in the same studio a couple of years later. The two matloes, Jack and Harry, are likewise under age. In fact, of a family of ten, everyone served underage in their time, boys and girls; one girl, Mary, was an ack-ack gun layer (on a 40 mm Bofors) when she was 17. We all survived the war. If you haven't read the book, you might also like to know that the Duke of York's was a seed bed for boy soldier recruits in those days. It's different now, about the same as a public school (private in North America). We were shovelled into the regular army as fast as they could churn us out. I'll not complain. By the age of 14, I was into an apprenticeship training school, then into the School of Military Engineering and commissioned in the Royal Engineers by the age of 18, running a power station in Egypt at 19 with the help of 20 POWs and five sappers. But there, as L.P. Hartley wrote (in The Go Between) 'The past is a foreign land. They speak a different language there.'" [Cockerill]

New Book

Art's book Sons of the Brave, The Story of Boy Soldiers is currently out of print. Art tells us that he has just published a new book. He writes, "The latest book of mine on military children is The Charity of Mars, published in 2003." Art has a limited number of these for interested readers. The book can be ordered from:

Art Cockerill
98 Maria's Quay
Cobourg, Ontario
Canada K9A 5R6

The books available for sale are The Charity of Mars and Emma on Albert Street. The Charity, which deals with the history of the Royal Military Asylum and is about the care and education of children, is $27 in U.S. funds incl. p & p. The other book (see my web site) is a children's book, which has sold well. That's $17 in U.S. funds incl. p & p.

Sources

Cockerill, Art. E-mail message, July 2, 2004.

Cockerill, A.W. Information*Research*Publications.

Created: 9:48 PM 7/2/2004
Last updated: 9:48 PM 7/2/2004