2015
ISBN: 978-0774828895
Nic Clarke draws on the service files of 3,400 rejected volunteers to examine the deleterious effects that socially constructed norms of health and fitness had on individual men and Canadian society during the First World War. Unwanted Warriors is the first book to consider the mechanics of the military medical examination, the physical and psychological characteristics that the authorities believed made a fighting man, and how evaluations changed as the war dragged on. It also brings to light the experiences of those who deliberately claimed disability to avoid service – a minority within the large population of rejected volunteers who felt denigrated, if not emasculated, by their exclusion from duty.