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Conscription during the First World War began when the British Parliament passed the Military Service Act in January 1916. The Act specified that single men aged 18 to 40 years old were liable to be called up for military service unless they were widowed with children, or were ministers of a religion.
Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many, including Kyiv, were skeptical that a major war could return to Europe. More than two years on, another shift once unthinkable is ...
A Coldstream Guards poster from World War I British Volunteer recruits in London, August 1914, who would form Kitchener's New Army. At the start of 1914, the British Army had a reported strength of 710,000 men including reserves, of which 247,432 were regular troops, also including 80,000 regular troops formed as the British Expeditionary Force ...
Impressment was essentially a Royal Navy practice, reflecting the sheer size of the British fleet and its substantial manpower demands. While other European navies applied forced recruitment in times of war, this was generally done as an extension of the practice of formal conscription applied by most European armies from the Napoleonic Wars on.
The introduction of conscription in May 1939, before the war began, was partly due to pressure from the French, who emphasized the need for a large British army to oppose the Germans. [273] From early 1942 unmarried women age 20–30 were conscripted (unmarried women who had dependent children aged 14 or younger, including those who had ...
The National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939 (2 & 3 Geo. 6.c. 81) was enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom on 3 September 1939, the day the United Kingdom declared war on Germany at the start of the Second World War. [1]
It was decided that those born on or after 1 October 1939 would not be required, but conscription continued for those born earlier whose call-up had been delayed for any reason. [3] In November 1960 the last men entered service, as call-ups formally ended on 31 December 1960, and the last National Servicemen left the armed forces in May 1963.