Scoutmaster

Scouting in the Netherlands during World War II

Piet Kroonenberg is the Historical Consultant to the European Scout Committee, and was awarded the Bronze Wolf in 1996 for his outstanding contribution to International Scouting. His books The Forgotten Movements and The Undaunted, as well as numerous articles, chronicle the history of Scouting in Europe. Piet writes with the authority of having been active in Scouting since before the Dutch World Jamboree in 1937.
"J" is a gripping and significant account of one Scout's experiences in Nazi-occupied Holland. "J" is the story of a Boy Scout, who, because of the terrible events of the Second World War, became a Courier for the Resistance, or Dutch Underground, an armed Resistance fighter, a translator and navigator to both the British and Canadian Armies of Liberation and, through it all and in his later years, a life-long Scout.

Read the story of Jay's life during the war at Scouting Milestones

Historic Archive of Boy's Life Magazine

An unofficial archive of Boy's Life Magazine that features many scans of old Boy's Life covers like the one above.

The first issue of Boys' Life appeared in March of 1911... not too many years later it became the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, and it has since gone on to over 1,100 issues... and still publishing!

This site is a work in progress, a "catalog" of the David Britton Collection of Boys' Life — a collection which includes almost all the issues!

We realized that a full reference for Boy's Life was unavailable on the web, and that an index to all the articles, authors and illustrators would be a valuable resource for many researchers. To this end we have begun a Boys' Life database, and as new issues are added, they will appear here.

LINK to the archive