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Ernest Steele

How an underage soldier refused to return home and paid for this decision with his life. Ernest Steele volunteered to fight for his country in late 1914, even though he was below the minimum age for signing up to fight. In August 1915 he was sent to the Belgium town of Ypres, probably the most dangerous place for a British place to be based on the whole of the Western Front. In response to popular pressure, the army provided underage soldiers with an opportunity to return home. Ernest Steele refused to take up this up opportunity. Whilst in the village of Hooge, he was injured and the film describes the quite primitive way in which injuries were treated. Ernest was so shaken by his early experience of warfare that he tried to dissuade his younger brother, then aged 15, from signing up to fight. As well as seeing action at Ypres, Ernest fought as part of the Somme offensive, before eventually being killed by a German sniper in the closing months of the war.

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6 minutes

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