History Main / ChildSoldiers

Compare LittleMissBadass, CreepyChild, CuteBruiser, EnfanteTerrible, KidSamurai, NewMeat, YoungGun. The ShellShockedSenior may actually be a high-school senior.

* The Cadians in ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'' are trained from birth for combat. The birth rate and recruitment rate is the same thing. Their soldiers enter combat as part of the youth army, at age 13. They only get promoted to the full army by earning a medal. And they are ''badass''.
** Justified in that the planet Cadia itself is parked right outside a NegativeSpaceWedgie that leads straight to hell, and frequently spews forth the demonic armies of chaos. Such an extreme militarization on the part of the populace is the only reason they've managed to hold onto the place for so long. A common saying among the Cadians is that any Cadian who can't field-strip his own lasgun by the age of ten was born on the wrong planet.

** Mangaka Masashi Kishimoto is queasy about actually killing off members of his young protagonist set outright (aside from feints, flashbacks, and characters over 25), but has no such qualms about having enemy shinobi bite the dust. Fair enough... [[FridgeLogic up until you realize]] that all of Orochimaru's non-filler Quirky Miniboss Squads, minus Kabuto, are no older than the junior-high-aged protagonists when they die horribly.

* [[FinalFantasyVIII The SeeD]] is made up almost entirely of ChildSoldiers; the game's hero, Squall, began his training before the age of 10. Most of the cadets are orphans, and the {{Phlebotinum}} they're trained to use has the side effect of eroding their memories.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/RedChildSoldiers.jpg
[[caption-width:288:Boy's Army battle, from a USSR preschool [[http://rot.ems.ru/mk/mk.html picture book]]]]

** Also, Mihiro Ardygun in ''SuperRobotWarsW'', who co-pilots the Valhawk with her older brother (himself 16) at the age of 10. [[spoiler:During the TimeSkip, while her brother was missing, she took over piloting duties full-time.]] Though not a soldier ''officially'', she does fight on behalf of a government organization that does include several soldiers, including the aforementioned ones from ''GundamWing'' and ''FullMetalPanic''.

* What's a young girl in a pretty white dress doing as one of the top three generals in ''ChronoCross''? At least you can say the other kids making up the party weren't inducted into the army, what with growing up in the streets as a thief, swinging an oar, fishing, or being abandoned in the woods at 3 with only the biggest strength score in the game and an axe to survive.

* In a way, the protagonists of the ''{{Pokemon}}'' franchise are child soldiers. They're different from other child trainers.
* The School in SuperRobotWars original generation is a breeding ground for these

* ''{{Bokurano}}'' has a group of 12-13-year olds (the first episode states they've just finished grade school) protecting the whole world from being destroyed. Even if they ''were'' completely well-adjusted to begin with ([[DysfunctionJunction and they're]] ''[[DysfunctionJunction not]]'' -- [[AuthorAppeal this is a Mohiro Kitoh work]]) the circumstances of the 'game' they've found themselves in makes their tenure as 'defenders of earth' more tragic than most examples on this page combined.

** Iji is actually 20 years old, so she doesn't count. The diary writing soldier and her girlfriend are definite examples, though.

* ''SuikodenII'' is the ur-example of this trope. The story revolves around two friends who during military training for a youth brigade, are attacked by their own country's forces dressed up as a neighboring nation's units, just to justify going to war with that nation. Many child soliders such as Pohl are ven killed (in his case, run through by Luca Blight).

* Yuu Ominae from the anime/manga series ''{{Spriggan}}'', was "recruited" (read: kidnapped) into a secret U.S. government black ops unit called COSMOS sometime after his archaeologist parents were killed in Iran. Considering he's no older than 16-17 by present day in the series (he's a high school student), this means he was likely taken around the age of 10. COSMOS (Children of Soldier Machine Organic System) was filled out with children kidnapped by the CIA from the around world. They are brainwashed, have their names replaced by a number, and given extensive special forces training. To give some perspective as to the results of this training, Yuu, after freeing himself from COSMOS' brainwashing, is considered to be one of the deadliest special agents alive in the world of Spriggan.

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTGbP55HGi8 Hamas' use of child soldiers and suicide bombers.]]

* FireEmblem games usually play this for drama. The younger members often have some tragic backstory that forces them into war. A few examples: Amelia, Ross, and Franz from SacredStones all have a MissingMom. The latter two suffering from varying degrees of DisappearedDad. Amelia's mom was kidnapped by bandits, [[UnfortunateImplications whatever that may lead to]] [[spoiler:Though, if you support Amelia with Duessel, we learn that her mom [[HeGotBetter got better]]]]. Ross's mom got sick and died, and his father, who had left them to join the army, retired to raise his son. Franz's mother got sick and died as well, his father, a knight, died fighting bandits. We also have Colm and Neimi. Neimi was raised by her grandfather, and when he died, Colm was the only other person she had. Naturally, those two are the fastest support in the game, usually able to get to A level by the 8th chapter.

* The whole ''HarryPotter'' series is about kids getting caught up in their elders' war and recruited/forced to fight in it in various capacities. This is an instance of "Precociously Talented Type" and "Just Plain Tragic Type" combined.

* In ''FanFic/{{Exoria}}'', Hylian Joint Intelligence is revealed to have hijacked the Spencer Welfare Program, an initiative designed to raise and educate orphaned children so they can serve the government when then grow up. Joint Intelligence keeps tabs on the program to search for candidates for the intelligence agency, and provide them underage military training covertly. Agent Link became an exceedingly young agent of Joint Intelligence this way.

* In ''FanFic/{{Exoria}}'', Hylian Joint Intelligence is revealed to have hijacked the Spencer Welfare Program, an initiative designed to raise and educate orphaned children so they can serve the government when then grow up. Joint Intelligence keeps tabs on the program to

** In GundamSeed and GundamSeedDestiny the same thing applies wih most of the main cast, heroic ''and'' antagonistic being in their teens.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lw%C3%B3w_Eaglets Lwow Eaglets]].Most of them younger than 17,youngest fighter was 9 years old.Notable fighters were Jurek Bitschan - 14 year old who died protecting his post and Antoni Petrykiewicz - 13 year-old who died from fatal wounds after a battle.Post-mortem honoured with highest polish military decoration of courage Order Virtuti Militari (comparable to Medal of Honour)

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTGbP55HGi8 Hamas' use of Child Soldiers and suicide bombers.]] Seriously, this troper's surprised nobody's brought up something like this yet.

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* The Clone Troopers of ''StarWars'' are considered combat ready at age ten. Their accelerated aging means they appear twenty, and they've been trained since birth. As far as this Troper is concerned, making use of the clones is the Republic's MoralEventHorizon.

* In ''Doctor Zhivago,'' during the Russian Civil War, the Red Army unit in which Zhivago is serving as a medical officer comes under fire from a (presumably White) machine-gun nest in the distance. The Reds shoot all their attackers dead, then approach the nest and find that, while they are wearing some sort of uniform, they are only boys, except for one old man. One Red looks closer at a uniform and says, astonished, "St. Michael's Military School?!" To the dead old man: "You rotten bastard!"
* In ''Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World'' (see discussion of the ''M&C'' novels in the Literature section, below), a 12-year-old midshipman loses an arm to enemy fire in the opening scene of the film. Captain Aubrey is very solicitous of him thereafter, giving him a book with an engraving of the one-armed, one-eyed Admiral Nelson, and leaving him in command of the HMS Surprise when the other officers board a French vessel; and the boy remains so game an officer that a case could be made for including this under the "Precociously Talented Type." But, still! And this is, of course, Truth in Television. In fact, most officers of the Royal Navy in that period probably started out as midshipmen in their teens or younger.