South Londoners Moses & Eliza Piggott’s new baby son arrived on 27th May 1900 in the middle of the Boer War, with London still clearing up after the celebrations for the Relief of Mafeking.
And, when the little boy was christened at Christ Church, Penge, two weeks later, jubilant news had come through of another success, the British capture of Pretoria, the South African Republic’s capital.
So, caught up in the hopeful mood, Moses & Eliza patriotically christened their son George William Pretoria Piggott, a name longer than he was.
Patriotism ran in the little boy’s blood and just before his 15th birthday, George presented himself at the recruiting office in Bromley and managed to enlist into the Royal West Kents, claiming, with a thumping heart and his deepest possible voice, to be 18.
Perhaps the scar over his left eyebrow helped to lend him a roguish air of maturity.
Wild with joy that his ruse had worked, he was sent to join his Regiment at Maidstone to begin training.
And George was just about through basic training by the time his Mum, frantically waving his birth certificate, caught up with him, and he was duly discharged as “having made a mis-statement as to age on enlistment.”
Still only 15 but now a trained and thoroughly mortified soldier with nowhere to go, he was brought home to Penge for Christmas 1915.
Perhaps he struck a deal with Mum not to try again til he was older; perhaps his father’s early death in 1916 changed things at home.
Either way, in September 1917 and now a full 3 inches taller, George got himself to Portsmouth and enlisted, under his real age, as a Boy into the Royal Navy.
His full 12-year engagement would not officially begin until his 18th birthday the following May.
His training began again.
But after only eight weeks of military service, he would spend Christmas 1917, desperately ill, aboard the Hospital Ship ‘China’ and lose his brave battle with pneumonia on 28th December.
Bless his heart – Boy 1st Class George William Pretoria Piggott really tried to live up to the martial glory of his name.
He could have given no more and We Will Remember Him always.
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