How total war changes personnel standards

Peacetime recruitment allows greater selectivity than the mass mobilization imagined here. Paul recalls being rejected for the Royal Naval Reserve because of his uncorrected eyesight despite his nursing qualifications. In the total-war scenario, a shortage of doctors and nurses would make the ability to perform the clinical role more important than limitations irrelevant to it. The staffing argument also challenges the description of earlier servicemen as simply expendable: the level of risk commanders accepted and the smaller choice available in total war offer another explanation. More training and changing social expectations enter the comparison, without reducing it to a single cause.