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The Tragic History of the U.S. Child Warriors

Khalid Elhassan June 9, 2020 34 min

20. WWII’s Youngest Serviceman

After his father’s death and mother’s remarriage, Calvin Leon Graham (1930 – 1992) found himself one of seven children living with an abusive stepfather in Houston. At age eleven, the child moved out with an older brother, and supported himself by delivering newspapers and telegrams on the weekends and outside school hours.

A year later, in 1942, he told his mother he was going to visit relatives. Instead, the twelve-year-old child headed to a recruitment office. There, lying about his age, Calvin joined the US Navy. That made him WWII’s youngest American serviceman, as well as the youngest one decorated for heroism during that conflict.

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.