Can anyone clarify some questions I have on this subject? My Grandfather served in India/Burma during the war and as far as I know he was a conscripted serviceman. I believe he was 30/31 at the time of joining. Did the conscription start with the younger men and then reach those in their 30s or was there no distinction? Also, during conscription did men mainly join the nearest regiment to their home address? If so, did this decide whether they would be in Europe or Asia etc? Cheers
Can anyone clarify some questions I have on this subject? My Grandfather served in India/Burma during the war and as far as I know he was a conscripted serviceman. I believe he was 30/31 at the time of joining. Did the conscription start with the younger men and then reach those in their 30s or was there no distinction? Also, during conscription did men mainly join the nearest regiment to their home address? If so, did this decide whether they would be in Europe or Asia etc? Cheers Hello Dale, There are already quite a few threads on this; if you use the search function you should be able to find them. With that in mind, I'll just give you a very brief answer to both questions: 1) Conscription was organized by age cohort, with each cohort being called up at periodic intervals; younger men first, then older. 2) Where a conscript ended up depended on many things: his pre-war trade, his expressed preference, the needs of the services at any given moment, etc. Geography played a role, but never a primary one, and its importance declined significantly as the war went on. As I say, there are more detailed answers that have been posted in the past, so the search engine is your friend. Best, Alan
Thanks for the reply Alan. I did actually try the search function before I posted but didn't seem to find threads concerning this subject. Perhaps I didn't use the search function properly. Interesting you say about the preferred choice, as I couldn't see my Grandfather choosing Asia, but perhaps choice was a smaller factor by the time he went.
Thanks for the reply Alan. I did actually try the search function before I posted but didn't seem to find threads concerning this subject. Perhaps I didn't use the search function properly. Interesting you say about the preferred choice, as I couldn't see my Grandfather choosing Asia, but perhaps choice was a smaller factor by the time he went. Hello Dale, When I said 'where he ended up' I meant the arm of service he joined, not the physical location he served in. That was largely out of the conscript's hands, except insofar as it could be roughly predicted by his branch of the service (so you were more likely to perform home service if you joined the RAF, more likely to spend time overseas if you were in the Navy, etc.) Best, Alan
Hello Dale, Conscription was organized by age cohort, with each cohort being called up at periodic intervals; younger men first, then older. To be more precise, conscription was organised by date of birth cohort, rather than age per se. No-one's "age" is static; but the date of birth is fixed for all time. The principle of younger men first was not absolute: there was some staggering, and by the middle of the war allowance had to be made for men who had been below military age at the beginning.
During WW2 they would post conscripts to Regiments all over GB this was to avoid casualties all happening in one town or village like the Pals battalions of WW1. When these pals Battalions went over the top in WW1 whole towns and villages suddenly lost nearly all the men folk. I have known Londoners posted to Regiments in Northern Ireland and Scotland. After WW2 then most of the conscripts were posted to local units. but in those days most Counties had at least two Line Regiments in the county and some times more so the men were scattered amongst these and they did not all go to same Regiment.
Actually, the 'territorial' system of regimental recruiting in peacetime never really worked in the way it was supposed to even before WWI. Part of the problem was that the recruitment boundaries established in the 1870s and 1880s didn't really reflect the demographic reality of industrial Britain; most of the potential recruits lived in London and the big urban centers of the midlands and the north, not the shire counties. And the disconnect only got worse in the Twentieth Century. David French talks about this at length in his excellent book Military Identities (2004). Best, Alan
