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"Boys" or "Lads" as a banterish term for a group of men is just a thing in the English language and British culture. A senior citizens dominoes team might refer to themselves that way and they wouldn't be thinking of themselves as children. It can be a bit adolescent but no more than that. Nobody but you thinks it means we see professional soldiers as young children.
The adolescent romanticisation of war is definitely a thing in this and many cultures, but you're overdoing the connection here.
itsbruce
eskay
I’m looking at the phrase from a critical discourse point of view. There’s a sentimental, familial attachment in the phrase ‘our boys/our lads’. We use it for our soldiers, but not the enemy’s. If the average age of KIAs is (tragic) 22 y/o, then the average soldier killed in combat was a young man, not a boy. Of course we feel sentimental and protective of our tribesmen and our tribe’s warriors, but I find it curious that the way our society approaches their death is slightly infantilising. Other societies, and indeed the military, might highlight their adulthood, but we paternalise them.
Or so it seems to me anyway, it was a Sunday rumination.