An 11-year-old Woking Sea Cadet helped honour a US Coast Guardsman just four years older than him at the Veterans Day Remembrance Ceremony at Brookwood American Cemetery.

Able Junior Cadet James, the youngest Woking cadet taking part, introduced Boy First Class Irving Alexander Slicklen during the ceremony’s Calling of the Names.

He then invited Mark Mollan, chief historian of the United States Coast Guard Historian’s Office, to tell Slicklen’s story.

Other Woking cadets introduced guests who spoke about those who died in the First World War. The cadets also handed wreaths to guests to lay during the ceremony.

Slicklen was still at school in New York when he walked into a Manhattan recruiting office one afternoon in March 1918 and enlisted. According to the Coast Guard’s history, he was tall for his age.

When his grandmother learnt what he had done, she hurried to the recruiting office to ask for his release, arguing he was too young, but he was already being processed for sea duty.

The cutter Tampa was one of six US Coast Guard cutters selected for overseas convoy duty in 1917. It escorted merchant ships from Gibraltar to Britain, helping protect them from German submarines.

On 26 September 1918, running low on coal, Tampa left its convoy and headed for Milford Haven in Wales to refuel.

A German submarine torpedoed the cutter as it sailed alone through the Bristol Channel. Tampa sank in under three minutes, killing all 131 people aboard, including 111 Coast Guardsmen, four US Navy personnel and 16 Royal Navy personnel and civilians.

Slicklen was just 15. Because his body was never recovered, he is permanently commemorated on the Wall of the Missing at the cemetery.

The wreck lay undiscovered for more than a century. In April this year, the US Coast Guard announced that the British diving team Gasperados had located it about 50 miles off Newquay, Cornwall, at a depth of more than 300 feet.

Young people can join Woking’s Junior Sea Cadets from age 10, and Sea Cadets is open to those aged 12 to 17.

Juniors meet on Mondays and the older cadets on Mondays and Thursdays, from 7pm to 9pm at the Dianthus Building in Goldsworth Park. Families can find out more by emailing [email protected].