WW1 soldier = slim, fit and good looking?

[bkristof]

This started after a good discussion about living history.

I noticed that still a lot of people are convinced that all WW1 soldiers are slim, very fit and good looking.

But i am using pieces of original webbing, i am not slim at all, my belt is even a little bit to big. It is marked: L, 1916; L stands for large. I have 3 large belts! so they are not so rare. Offcourse you find more medium belts...

Can there be "fat" soldiers in the frontlines? Like the bloke in the trench?

I am convinced of it: YES.

At both sides the didn't refused the volunteers who were not slim or less fit. So, i believe it is ok. But a living history group may not be 50% old fatties offcourse.

just look the picture (authentic) of a guy with the same size like me, in WW1 !

What is your opinion? Any more photo's?

or maybe medical lists?

[John_Hartley]

Kristof

I'm sure there were "larger than average" guys in the trenches, just as there were "smaller than average" in, say the British bantam battalions.

However, I think you will find the most guys were shorter and thinnner than most men today.

The photos in the Manchesters Book of Honour, of recruitment platoons, shows that most appear to be of "normal" proportions. I have read somewhere that many of the men, during training, actually put on weight - presumably reflecting a very poor diet in the industrial north west.

John

[bkristof]

I agree on that:

Most of them were smaller. We all grew up with more hormones in the flesh we eat.

About beeing thinner, I think it changed during the war. But i agree again, the industrial regions were no fun at all and they didn't get enough food.

Should there be some list or such?

I really want to dig (or spit) this one out...

No to say i am not fat or too fat to do living history. But to know the historical facts.

[steve fuller]

Interesting thread bkristof.

I had the preconception that all soldiers who had been in the front line for a while were scruffy, thin & wafish with haunted eyes; wrong of course but I had that idea nonetheless!!

Since starting this interest, Ive seen several pics of Beds soldiers before & after combat & although they are often thin & straggly, its not always the case. My Gt Gramps was a muscly Stonemason pre war, went to Gallipoli & got shipped back with a wound. Yet the pic taken whilst he was recovering shows his biceps & shoulders are still huge even after Gallipoli & a stomach operation. Another 5th Beds man was definitely overweight (a 20 stone man Id say) before he left for Gallipoli, yet was also pretty big when he got back (must have still been 17 stones at least -again after being wounded etc). And so it goes on ...

And these guys did a tour in Gallipoli, where dysentry, wounds, lack of food & water etc were common place. Makes you wander how they did it, but they did it somehow! I suppose that if you like food & alchohol that much, you'd find a way of getting it wherever you are??

And of course, they dont need to be overweight to wear large clothes always. I would also imagine that many of the soldiers were land workers, miners etc, so their build would be pretty muscular during the early phases of the war? that may explain the number of Large belts perhaps?

And as for the good looking bit. Well, no doubt the haunted eyes can be attractive to those who like the 'dangerous look', but Im happy being ugly with 'normal' eyes than be a handsome brute of a man whos been on 'the other side' - and come back!!

[David_Bluestein]

Here is one of our more famous Canadians of the Great War, who some might say was ‘bigger’ then average: General Arthur Currie.

Currie is standing left, next to the Prince of Whales. To the Prince's right is Brig. Gen. Morrison and divisional commander, Major-General David Watson.

[Terry]

Currie was huge for the time, especially when I look at the attestation papers of the men whose medals reside in my collection. The majority of them were 5-4 or 5-5 tall.

Oddly I am awaiting the arrival of a single war medal from a friend which belonged to a fellow who, if the attestation paper is correct was 6 feet,8 1/2 inches tall!

[HarryBettsMCDCM]

Not to Forget all those Barrel Chested Sergeant Majors,with 20 inch Necks never mind about 46 inch waists!

[chris.wight]

David, fantastic photo. Currie towers over the others, doesn't he! Quite the staff car too. Was the photo taken in France?

Seems others couldn't help but notice his size as well as his Chief Engineer, General Lindsay as this cartoon shows. In the photo you can General Linday directly behind Currie (both photos from "Marching to Armageddon").

General Currie's size never detracted from his capability.

[Guest LauraEJT]

Hi to you Kristof,

I think they would have been only too glad to have well fed robust men there -doesn't there seem to be an indication that quite a lot of men trying to join up were underweight/height even by the standard of the time (when working class men were routinely only 5 foot five)?

Totally unscientific,but my Grandfather (a farmers son) was considered tall at about 5 foot 10-off subject but my Nan (his wife) was 5 foot 6 and considered "too tall"!! (Not for the war but by towering over other women)!!

Cheers,laura

[Canadawwi]

I can fairly easily discover articles mentioning a soldier's height, but rarely weight. In this case - I do have a weight - over 200 pounds. This is from early in the war - and also, the soldier in question was older than average. (Article dated January 20th, 1916 - relating to a death of a South African Vet at Langemarck in April 1915).

[frev]

If you ever see any photos of a great Aussie General, Sir John Monash - you'll see that at the beginning of the war he was nearly as wide as he was tall - but by the end of the war had slimmed down incredibly.

I've often come across references to "tall, bronzed Anzacs" - but out of the many Aussies I've researched, the average height seems to be about 5' 7'' - & those with dark complexions were fewer than those with fair complexions (though this may have changed earlier on under the gruelling sun of Egypt etc). I hadn't thought these guys were tall at all, until I read some of the comments here. I thought perhaps they'd just seemed larger than life because of their larrikin characters.

Mind you there were some pretty tall Aussies - namely the following two in this snippet from an Aussie newspaper, 17/9/1915:

"TWO GIANTS.

The tallest man in the Bendigo camp is Sergeant Tom Waldron, of No. 1 Platoon, who stands 6ft 4 1/2 in in his stocking feet. He is the shortest member of his family, and weighs 14st 8lb.

The next to him in height is Sergeant B.A. Saunders, of Inglewood, who is in No. 3 Platoon, stands 6ft 4in and weighs 16st 8lbs. Needless to say, both officers had to be specially fitted for uniforms and boots."

Cheers, Frev

[robbie]

Frev,

My grandad was 5' 7" which according to him was above average for Aussie recruits at that time.

I expect that given their height, Waldron and Saunders found it rather uncomfortable in the trenches, poor fellas.

Robbie

[frev]

Robbie

Out of the 80 guys I'd written down the heights for they were as follows:

5'3" =4; 5'4" =4; 5'5" = 10; 5'6" =12; 5'7" =16; 5'8" =10; 5'9" =10; 5'10" =9; 5'11" = 3; 6' =4; 6'1" = 2

Who knows, by the time I get the details on the other 600 or so on my database it might go down (then again - it might go up).

I'd agree that once they got into the trenches, most guys would have probably been wishing they were shorter than they were (no matter their height). Just imagine the size of the trenches they'd have to dig to cater for today's soldiers!

Cheers, Frev

[Chris_Baker]

Of the several hundred soldiers I've researched where the medical details were found, I have yet to find one with a 40-inch chest. The majority on recruitment were around 33-34-inch. A small teenager by today's standards.

[robbie]

Of the several hundred soldiers I've researched where the medical details were found, I have yet to find one with a 40-inch chest. The majority on recruitment were around 33-34-inch. A small teenager by today's standards.

Hi Frev and Chris,

Shows how bad my memory is - when I checked Grandad's vital stats just now I had underestimated his height - it was 5' 10" (not 5,7). His chest measurements were 31 1/2" and 35" expanded. His weight was 142 lbs - only 10 stones 2lbs. My goodness that's quite thin for a 24-year-old, isn't it?

RObbie

[DirtyDick]

It's a similar story for many of the WW2 service docs that I have looked at: often a few inches taller than their WW1 counterparts, but still small and slightly built compared with the average today.

Hardly scientific, I know, but most - born anytime between 1903-22 - were about 5'7 or 5' 8 - although one 36 y.o. was 5' 2 - and had chest measurements of about 35-36 inches: most of these were in their 20s or 30s, so one would expect them to be fully developed. (It must be noted that these were Australian and South African recruits, the fabled 'beanstalks' when compared to their British cousins.)

Looking at WW1-era Navy records, where most joined as teenagers, it is startling how many were only a little over 5ft upon enlistment with chest measurements of 30-32 inches, and most didn't break 5' 6 and above 34 inch chests even as fully developed adults when their later characteristics were noted.

Richard

[PhilB]

I suspect that almost all the rotund men you find in WW1 would be higher ranking officers who were well fed and rode in cars or on horseback. It was unusual even in the 50s to find fat schoolchildren or soldiers and it was probably more unusual in WW1. Phil B

[bkristof]

And the Sgt. on the picture then? A sacked officer?

[BeppoSapone]

Hi to you Kristof,

I think they would have been only too glad to have well fed robust men there -doesn't there seem to be an indication that quite a lot of men trying to join up were underweight/height even by the standard of the time (when working class men were routinely only 5 foot five)?

Totally unscientific,but my Grandfather (a farmers son) was considered tall at about 5 foot 10-off subject but my Nan (his wife) was 5 foot 6 and considered "too tall"!! (Not for the war but by towering over other women)!!

Cheers,laura

Don't Dallas and Gill touch on this in one of the early chapters of "The Unknown Army"?

I have not read this since the mid 1980s but, iirc, they wrote about how physically small city-bred British volunteers were found to be at the time of the second Boer War. They contrasted the townsmens size with that of countrymen, who had been the traditional sort of recruit.

[PhilB]

And the Sgt. on the picture then? A sacked officer?

I did say "almost all". The odd one was bound to slip through! Phil B

[DirtyDick]

Given the military systems that allowed for the mass citizen armies of the Continent pre-1914, it is hardly surprising that a number of WW1 servicemen were noticeably overweight. (Which does not rule out their being fit enough to fight - today there are Marines and Paras whose weight, if taken at face value, would lead to them being classed as obese because they are build like brickshithouses, who can easily contend with the cardio-vascular demands placed upon them).

If the French and Germans called up virtually every able-bodied man under 50 within months of the outbreak of hostilities, this would account for such disparate physiques: if we suddenly recalled serviceman twenty years after they had spent 2-3 yrs in the Army, we would have all shapes and sizes, although admittedly we would have more fatties than skinnies than they had in WW1.

The same would be true of the British Army, especially in the latter years of the War when older (and younger) and otherwise unfit men were swept up by the Army (with plans to conscript up to the age of 55 in 1918).

And who can forget the fat bruiser Eph Lot, from "Convenant with Death" by John Harris; these were 1914 New Army men and the book based very much on first hand accounts.

Richard

[spike10764]

Here is a picture of some typical Pals Battalion recruits, circa 1915. Taken at the racecourse Carlisle, it features some of the Lonsdale Pals Battalion.

On the whole, they are thin urban types, with a sprinkling of ages and sizes and one or two farm lads.

I think the picture gives a very good idea of the average "build" of the day.

[robbie]

Thanks Spike. They seem to be not unlike guys of today. Am I missing something here?

Robbie

[spike10764]

No - just that us Cumbrians haven't changed much in 90 years.

I would say very few of these men could be accused of carrying " extra pounds" (the soldier in the middle at the back , maybe) and I don't think today if you took a comparable range of ages and heights from the area, you'd be able to say that.

[Terry]

The medal I was waiting for has arrived, along with the fellow's file. There on the attestation paper is his height, 6 feet, 8 1/2 inches. However, as I dug through his file, I came across further information. His medical file has him as 127 pounds! Wow!

Then it becomes clear; his height is down as 5 feet, 8 1/4 inches, still pretty good for 1918 but a long way from basketball player size. Obviously the clerk doing the attestation document wrote down "6" instead of "5".