'FIT TO FIGHT?' HOW THE PHYSICAL CONDITION OF THE CONSCRIPTS CONTRIBUTED TO THE MANPOWER CRISIS OF 1917-18

By 1917 the British Army on the Western Front faced a manpower crisis. Great Britain's difficulties in struggling to maintain her industrial output and her import/export trade while simultaneously trying to maintain her armed forces at full strength has long been recognized. The manpower requirement of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the face of superior German forces was ever more urgent. This article aims to establish another element in the manpower crisis as a significant cause of the situation in which the BEF found itself. It will explore the extent to which the health and fitness of British Army conscripts of 1917-18 affected the BEF's ability to provide men for the combat formations that constituted the Army's fighting strength on the Western Front. It will challenge the view that the principal reason for the manpower crisis of 1917-18 was due to the competing demands of the Army and industry. This article explores why so many men were rejected as unfit to fight as frontline soldiers by setting the context of their health and fitness into their Victorian and Edwardian childhoods, exploring the living and social conditions of the working class recruits, who were often deeply malnourished and very poor. This article concludes that deep poverty, disability and malnutrition of a high percentage of recruits created the BEF's staffing problem. OA