One forgets that wars are fought by children

Rico says that, going from one article to the next in 'Military Collector & Historian', the magazine of the Company of Military Historians, of which Rico is a proud member, he was struck by the obvious youth (because they were all photographed) of the kids (there's no other word for them) who fought in Vietnam (a war, like all the others, that Rico was happy to miss). While the Civil War veterans in the previous articles weren't much older, because many were bearded, they LOOKED older...