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Civilians into soldiers: War, the body and British Army recruits, 1939-45

Online ISBN:
9781781707869
Print ISBN:
9780719088049
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Book

Civilians into soldiers: War, the body and British Army recruits, 1939-45

Emma Newlands
Emma Newlands
University of Strathclyde
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Published online:
21 May 2015
Published in print:
1 November 2014
Online ISBN:
9781781707869
Print ISBN:
9780719088049
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

Abstract

Civilians into Soldiers is an examination of British Army life during the Second World War. Drawing on a wealth of official records and servicemen’s personal testimonies it explores the ways in which male civilians were turned into soldiers through the techniques by which they were inducted into military culture. The book demonstrates that the body was central to this process. Using strict physical regimes, the military authorities sorted men into bodily types that reflected their cultural assumptions and sought to transform them into figures that they imagined to be ideal. However, soldiers’ bodies were often far from ideal and served to frustrate these designs. While recruits were willing to engage in practices and routines that they found desirable they also resisted the army’s demands by creating subversive bodily cultures. The book follows the chronological experiences of army personnel, from their recruitment and training to their confrontations with wounding and death, tracing the significance of the body throughout. It analyses the extent to which the British Army organised compliance and relied on consent to achieve its objectives, the ways in which resistance was manifested and experienced, and what can be drawn from these instances by way of larger observations about wartime society in general. By examining soldiers’ embodied experiences it also illuminates broader issues of gender, class, national identity and emotional life. As such, it makes a major contribution to military history, medical history and the social and cultural history of Britain in the Second World War.

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