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America’s Youngest Warriors – Children Who Fought for the US

Khalid Elhassan April 4, 2025 17 min

Children - US Army Sergeant John Lincoln Clem — US Army Sergeant John Lincoln Clem. Metropolitan Museum of Art

14. A Child in the Mozart Regiment

Gustav Albert Schurmann’s uniform. New York State Military Museum, Saratoga Springs

The Mozart Regiment initially rejected Gustav Schurmann because of his age and small size. Then Gustav’s father asked the 40^th New York’s colonel to at least hear the boy’s drumming. He was a musical prodigy who took after his father, and the demonstration convinced the regiment’s commander to change his mind and add Gustav to the unit’s muster. The Mozart Regiment served in the Peninsula Campaign, during which Gustav was loaned out to General Kearney for a day as an orderly for a grand review. Impressed by the lad, the general ordered him to gather his gear from his regiment, and assigned him to his headquarters staff as orderly and principal bugler. General Kearney was killed in August, 1862, and his replacement, General Birney, retained Gustav as orderly and bugler. After the Battle of Antietam, the boy was assigned to General Stoneman’s III Corps staff, and promoted to Corps bugler.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.