Britain's youngest First World War fighter was just 13 when he saw action in Battle of the Somme, after he tricked officers and comrades into believing he was 18.
Sidney Lewis was 12-years-old when he enlisted, spending 10 months training with the East Surrey Regiment before he was sent into battle as a machine gunner on the Western Front.
During WWI the British Army recruited 250,000 boys under the age of 18, many of whom lied about their age so they could fight for king and country.
The Imperial War Museum confirmed Sidney was Britain's youngest soldier, who fooled comrades and offices that was over 18 because 'he was a big boy, from a family of big boys'.
Almost a million soldiers died in Somme but Sidney survived after a family friend recognised him on the front and told his mother where he was.
She complained to the War Office and he was discharged immediately, returning to his childhood. However, on his 18th birthday he reenlisted again.
His son Colin described how decades later the rest of the family didn't believe Sidney when he said he fought in the Great War.
Colin said: 'He did not talk much about the war and we thought he was making it up because we all thought that he would have been too young to have been there.
'He mentioned he had been in the First World War, and that he had seen action. And we never spoke about it again.'
Colin added: 'He served six weeks and in that time his mother raised the alarm and sent his birth certificate off, and he was discharged.
'
I was young at the time when he mentioned it, maybe 11 or 12, so I never got to ask him about it in more detail, but I wish I could tell him I was proud of him.'
On Saturday, Colin was guest of honour at the Lest We Forget concert in Birmingham.
However, not every British child soldier was as lucky as Sidney.
Horace Iles was shamed into joining the army when a woman gave him a white feather when he was just 14-years-old.
Two years later in 1916 he died in the Battle of the Somme aged just 16.
Reginald St John Battersby signed up as a private aged 14 and unbelievably got promoted to 2nd Lieutenant at the insistence of his father and headmaster who thought that his rank was beneath him – despite him being too young to be in uniform.
Battersby was wounded by machine gun fire while leading his men over the top at the Somme and then three months later he lost a leg to shellfire.
Over one million people died at the Battle Of The Somme.
