# 4F = lacking four front teeth? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 2, 2019, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931 "2019-11-02T21:49:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2019, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/21 "2019-11-05T14:52:56Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Rejections for dental problems was a significant issue in WWI. You needed at least [twelve serviceable teeth](https://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/dental/ch6.htm) (out of 32 :eek: ) and a lot of recruits didn’t make the standard. It was a factor in the later push for fluoridation, which [got going in 1945](http://https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dentists-discovered-the-tooth-saving-properties-of-fluoride-by-accident-76237565/). > > Regards, > Shodan [Corrected link](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dentists-discovered-the-tooth-saving-properties-of-fluoride-by-accident-76237565/) They left out the part about the commie plot. ---
**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2019, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/22 "2019-11-05T22:19:08Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > The musket has a slot in the stock. The ramrod slides into this slot, and is held in place by friction between the ramrod, the slot, and the barrel bands. The stock is already there and the barrel bands are already there, so doing it this way doesn’t require any additional parts, and only requires cutting a slot into the stock which is easy to do. > … Thanks for this. I can see how the simplicity of the storage arrangement might trump the ergonomics. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2019, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/23 "2019-11-05T22:37:31Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > The first step is to put the butt of the rifle down on the ground, and pull out a cartridge. Your hands being “busy” is the fact that your left hand is holding the rifle and your right hand is holding the cartridge. Since you don’t have a third hand, you tear the end off of the cartridge with your teeth. Could you just tear the cartridge open with your fingers? I think this was suggested to the Indian soldiers in 1857. Of course, you need some dexterity to hold a long and heavy rifle while tearing the cartidige open. ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2019, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/24 "2019-11-05T23:07:07Z")
[Military Medical Enlistment Standards for Dental Issues](https://www.thebalancecareers.com/military-medical-standards-for-enlistment-and-appointment-3353998) Chapter 2 Physical Standards for Enlistment, Appointment, and Induction 2-5. Dental a. Current diseases of the jaws or associated tissues that prevent normal functioning are disqualifying. Those diseases include, but are not limited to temporomandibular disorders (524.6) and/or myofascial pain that have not been corrected. b. Current severe malocclusion (524), which interferes with normal mastication or requires early and protracted treatment, or a relationship between the mandible and maxilla that prevents satisfactory future prosthodontic replacement is disqualifying. c. Current insufficient natural healthy teeth (521) or lack of a serviceable prosthesis that prevents adequate incision and mastication of a normal diet and/or includes complex (multiple fixtures) dental implant systems with associated complications are disqualifying. Individuals undergoing endodontic care are acceptable for entry in the Delayed Entry Program only if a civilian or military provider provides documentation that active endodontic treatment will be completed prior to being sworn into active duty. d. Current orthodontic appliances for continued treatment (V53.4) are disqualifying. Retainer appliances are permissible, provided all active orthodontic treatment has been satisfactorily completed. Individuals undergoing orthodontic care are acceptable for enlistment in the Delayed Entry Program only if a civilian or military orthodontist provides documentation that active orthodontic treatment will be completed prior to being sworn into active duty. A few years ago when I thought I might lose my teeth I lurked for a while at a denture support group message board. I think I recall someone posting there that they enlisted with pretty bad teeth and the military (don’t remember the branch) pulled his teeth and fitted him with full dentures almost immediately. Just my recollection of some random person on the internet so don’t hold me to it. I think the relevant term from what I posted above is “serviceable prosthesis”. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2019, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/25 "2019-11-06T09:04:50Z")
The Selective Service has used a bunch of different classifications for whether someone is qualified for service. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Training_and_Service_Act_of_1940#Draft_classifications) lists the ones that were used during World War II. As you can see, there were four broad categories, with “1” meaning “acceptable for military service,” and “4” meaning “unacceptable for military service.” The letter code that followed was a sub-class, so that “4-F” meant “rejected for military service, physical, mental, or moral reasons” (e.g. the subject had been arrested for littering). So the 4 and the F were part of a system, with lots of other number and letter combinations possible. 4-F had nothing to do with four teeth, or any teeth, or four of anything. It was just one classification code among many. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2019, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/26 "2019-11-06T15:46:23Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > The ball puller literally just screws into the soft lead musket ball so that you can yank it out. Usually if the musket doesn’t fire you can take off the cone and put a small bit of powder under it, put the cone back on, put a new percussion cap on it, and get it to fire at least well enough to push the ball out of the barrel. If the musket is really stubborn, or the soldier did something stupid and forgot to load the powder in his rush to load the musket quickly, then the ball puller is the only way you’re going to get the musket ball back out of the barrel. (UL mine) I recall reading somewhere that after Pickett’s charge, discarded muskets from both sides were retrieved with as many as eight bullet-and-powder combos jammed into the barrel. I would guess that in the heat of the battle, the soldier was not noticing the ramrod was stopping farther and farther out until it was _really_ obvious. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2019, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/27 "2019-11-06T16:50:46Z")
> [@DesertDog](#): > > I recall reading somewhere that after Pickett’s charge, discarded muskets from both sides were retrieved with as many as eight bullet-and-powder combos jammed into the barrel. I would guess that in the heat of the battle, the soldier was not noticing the ramrod was stopping farther and farther out until it was _really_ obvious. I have read the same thing. A lot of the multi-loads were probably just mistakes, but the ones where the barrels were almost completely packed full are thought to possibly have been intentional. The thinking is that maybe they needed to abandon a handful of muskets while they were preparing to retreat, and rather than leave perfectly functional muskets for the enemy to use against them, they packed them with multiple loads, knowing that the enemy probably didn’t have time during the battle to clear out each load one by one. Or maybe they hoped that an enemy soldier would pick it up and fire it and end up with the barrel exploding in his face. There is also the theory that the soldier screwed up and double loaded, and rather than admit his mistake, he just kept loading and pretending to shoot (probably didn’t bother to load the percussion cap) so that he wouldn’t get chewed out for screwing up. I have also read two different accounts of ramrods being fired at the enemy at Gettysburg. In the first case, a Confederate soldier fired his ramrod at Union troops. Nobody knows why. Most likely he was just in a hurry and goofed. Whatever the reason, the Union troops thought it made a funny sound, so a small group of them gathered up a few ramrods from the battle and fired them back at the Confederates a few times just for the amusement of the sound it made. In the second case, a soldier was dealing with a badly fouled barrel (black powder fouls barrels quickly) and the bullet got stuck while trying to reload. To make things worse, the ramrod also somehow got stuck while he was trying to fully seat the round. Out of sheer frustration, he pointed the musket at the enemy and pulled the trigger. He was kinda surprised that the barrel didn’t explode. When you don’t fully seat the round like that, you create a chamber where the gases from the powder exploding can build up to excessive pressures, basically exploding the barrel like a pipe bomb. He had been so frustrated that he knew that the barrel could basically explode in his face, and he had pulled the trigger anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2019, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/28 "2019-11-06T22:33:08Z")
I agree with previous posts mentioning that ‘4F’ is at best a loose anachronism for describing the issue with missing front teeth and paper cartridges. This is mentioned as something men would sometimes do to themselves, knock out their own front teeth, in Imperial Russia in the 18th/early 19th century where there was peacetime conscription of a limited % of the eligible male population for up to a lifetime of service, term gradually reduced over the 19th century and eventually made theoretically universal at 6 yrs. I’ve heard of it less in the context of US Civil War. Although conscription is infamous in that war, both for the system of paying substitutes and the NY draft riots, only 2-4% (depending on source\*) of Union and around 10% of Confederate soldiers were personally drafted, as opposed to men paid to substitute for draftees, and not counting men paid bonuses by state/local authorities to meet volunteer quotas particularly later in the war. So the whole situation was not one of a relatively uniform draft system producing a large % of the force as in US effort in WWII, Korea, Vietnam. And WWII also illustrates that ‘most soldiers were draftees’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘the war was deeply unpopular’. There could easily be social pressure that made it seem suboptimal to be self-marked as evader by maiming oneself permanently, even though there actually needed to be a draft, or threat of one, to fill out the ranks. That might have applied particularly in Confederate society. Anyway I don’t recall reading much about this draft evasion tactic in the USCW. \*this and other sources agree something like 50k actual Union draftees, this source counts around 1.2 mil as having served on Union side, but others more like twice that number. [https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/conscription.html](https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/conscription.html) ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2019, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/29 "2019-11-07T14:35:36Z")
My father’s side of the family arrived after that little fracas, but my mother’s side was already on the continent. Family legend had it that the guy in the northern branch paid someone to substitute for him when he was drafted and the guy in the southern branch had a hollow log to hide in when the levy gangs showed up. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2019, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/30 "2019-11-07T15:00:09Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > I have read the same thing. A lot of the multi-loads were probably just mistakes, but the ones where the barrels were almost completely packed full are thought to possibly have been intentional. The thinking is that maybe they needed to abandon a handful of muskets while they were preparing to retreat, and rather than leave perfectly functional muskets for the enemy to use against them, they packed them with multiple loads, knowing that the enemy probably didn’t have time during the battle to clear out each load one by one. Or maybe they hoped that an enemy soldier would pick it up and fire it and end up with the barrel exploding in his face. There is also the theory that the soldier screwed up and double loaded, and rather than admit his mistake, he just kept loading and pretending to shoot (probably didn’t bother to load the percussion cap) so that he wouldn’t get chewed out for screwing up. I asked a similar question once, many years ago, on another message board, and don’t recall getting a response. Is there a cite for that? Not someone repeating the claim, but a primary source that comes from, or at least provides identifying information for, the person or organization that went around collecting muskets and taking the time to tabulate how many had multiple rounds? I will say, your explanations for why this might have happened certainly seems more plausible than what was offered as an explanation at the time, and what in turn led me to question the whole account (I believe the poster was using it as “evidence” in favor of some of the dubious conclusions SLA Marshall came to about soldiers, even confronted with the enemy, refusing to fire deliberately at the enemy due to “reasons”). ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2019, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/31 "2019-11-07T15:44:21Z")
Here’s the actual answer to the OP- there have been multiple classifications for draftees historically - there’s a whole series of them prefixed with “4”- for example, 4-A means “Registrant who has completed service, or sole surviving son”. 4-B means “Official Deferred by Law”. And they go down the list to 4-F, which is “Registrant Not Qualified for Military Service”. There’s a 4-G (“Sole Surviving Son”) and a 4-D (“Minister of Religion -exempted from military service”) as well. > **[Return to the Draft | Selective Service System](https://www.sss.gov/about/return-to-draft/)** My suspicion is that it’s very unlikely that there’s any deeper meaning to the term 4-F than that. If anything, the listing of 1-A as “Available for Military Service” is probably more likely to have been chosen because of the associations of “A”, “1”, “A1” and “A-Number One” as indicators of excellence or primacy. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2019, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931/32 "2019-11-07T20:44:00Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > Is there a cite for that? From the Annual Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Ordinance of the Navy Department: > [@](#): > > On the field of Gettysburg there were twenty-seven thousand five hundred and seventy-four guns picked up, and of these twenty-four thousand were found loaded, and half of them were double loaded. One-fourth had from three to ten loads in, and many had five or six balls to one charge of powder. In some cases, powder was above the ball, in others the cartridges were not broken at the end, while in one musket twenty-three balls, sixty-two buckshot, and a quantity of gunpowder were all mixed up together." This excerpt is reprinted in the 1866 issue of the United States Service Magazine, Vol. 5. which can be found on google books. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/4f-lacking-four-front-teeth/842931.md?page=1)