Crosschecking various records seems to imply that my FIL signed up before he was required to do so. Apparently born 4/1922 in Glasgow, by 12/1940 (therefore 18 and 10 months) he was apparently a gunner in the Royal Artillery. Under the various Government Acts at that point the youngest age being called up was 20. How/when/why would he have signed up? How often did this happen? Was it considered a way to get out of a dead end area and open new horizons?
Why dont you contact the bbc and see if they would be interested in your story because you have been at this for years without getting any where each time you surface with a query it just adds your trail to the hundreds if not thousands of posts you have over the internet It has turned into a lord lucan chase Put your user name in the internet and you get pages and pages of your queries. I understand you need to find the truth but after all these years you are none the wiser I know your current query is possibly a standard one but for you what is the reason for posting it?
Self-determination? Anecdotally-individual but, with war seeming inevitable by Sep 1938, my dad consciously preempted the service assignment lottery by joining an RE/TA searchlight unit aged 20½. My mum did something similar by opting for the WAAF rather than risk being sentenced to factory drudgery. My dad's plan backfired, due to his failure to predict the consequences of his Reserved Occupation for his employer, but that's another story. Steve
A mate's Dad was inter-war TA infantry. He decided to join RASC in 1939 so he couldnt called back up for infantry. He ended up driving petrol tankers.
