Claiming that it was the result of a mistake, Ingram excused the government of any culpability by saying that most of these had been despatched to the war zone only shortly before their eighteenth birthdays.
Those who saw combat, he said, were withdrawn after only weeks of combat action.
Blaming a shortage of available soldiers, Ingram was quoted by the BBC as stating, “Unfortunately, these processes are not fallible and the pressures on units prior to deployment have meant that there have been a small number of instances where soldiers have been inadvertently deployed to Iraq before their eighteenth birthday.”