I'm currently (at the beginning of) researching the process people would go through for joining the British army (including the RAF and navy) during WW2 in England for a story I'm writing.
Specifically, the following:
- What would happen if someone were to walk in to the recruitment office wanting to join?
- Were there any historic cases of this process I could look at that are publicly available?
- The questions asked by the office?
- The types of papers needed to be filled out by the person?
- The checks/exams made on the wannabe recruit.
- And, if they were turned away because they were in protected wartime jobs i.e. engineering, farming, baking etc. or could they still choose to join despite this?
Any links to materials would be greatly appreciated on this topic.
The only thing I can seem to find (with Google at least) is a sentence from Wikipedia with no references but this is for the pre-war army.
The only pre-conditions placed on candidates were an interview with a recruiting officer, who could only glean partial information on a recruit, a medical examination, and some educational tests. If these requirements were met, the recruit was posted to the arm of his choice, there was no scientific selection process unlike the rapidly growing German army.
Which can be seen in full here on Wikipedia
If people can point me in the direction of reading materials, books, public papers/documents this would be a great starting point for me