Description
<p>John Boileau and Dan Black tell the stories of some of the 30,000 underage youths — some as young as fourteen — who joined the Canadian Armed Forces in the Second World War. This is the companion volume to the authors’ popular 2013 book <em>Old Enough to Fight</em> about boy soldiers in the First World War. Like their predecessors a generation before, these boys managed to enlist despite their youth. Most went on to face action overseas in what would become the deadliest military conflict in human history.</p> <p>They enlisted for a myriad of personal reasons — ranging from the appeal of earning regular pay after the unemployment and poverty of the Depression to the desire to avenge the death of a brother or father killed overseas. Canada’s boy soldiers, sailors and airmen saw themselves contributing to the war effort in a visible, meaningful way, even when that meant taking on very adult risks and dangers of combat.</p> <p>Meticulously researched and extensively illustrated with photographs, personal documents and specially commissioned maps, <em>Too Young to Die</em> provides a touching and fascinating perspective on the Canadian experience in the Second World War.</p> <p>Among the individuals whose stories are told:<br /> <ul><li>Ken Ewing, at age sixteen taken prisoner at Hong Kong and then a teenager in a Japanese prisoner of war camp</li><li>Ralph Frayne, so determined to fight that he enlisted in the army, navy and Merchant Navy all before the age of seventeen</li><li>Robert Boulanger, at age eighteen the youngest Canadian to die on the Dieppe beaches</li></ul></p>