When I watch documentaries about the military, it’s obvious that these are exceptionally fit young man (and women): They can run and walk long distances, carry huge amounts of gear, tackle brutal confidence courses, can do lots of pushups, pullups, situps, swim in full gear etc. etc.
I’m aware that there are cooks, clerks and barbers in every army, but this is about the men who do the actual fighting, but on the other hand, not necessarily only about what we today call special forces.
Good point. On the other hand, unless nutrition is blatantly insufficient, that’s not a big issue. And medical care usually isn’t that much of a concern for healthy young men. Of course, breaking an ankle could have crippled you for life 250 years ago.
Nutrition really was blatantly insufficient for most of the population. And childhood diseases were ubiquitous. The “healthy young men” were exceptions.
This only indirectly answers your question, but the average soldier in the Civil War was 5’ 8" and weighed only 143 pounds. I recall seeing similar vitals for WW2 draftees (but my google-fu is weak this morning…) Basically they were seriously scrawny dudes. After training, long marches, and lots of physical labor (i.e. digging trenches), they’d be strong in a wiry sort of way. But even then, malnutrition and disease has historically killed more soldiers than actual combat. Go back more than 50 years, and you won’t find many soldiers that look like modern body builders.
I would think that soldiers entering the military 200 years ago were in much better shape than they are today due to the more hard scrabble life that the majority of people were forced to endure. Kids back then had to go fetch there own water, do chores and had diseases culling out the herd. If you made to 16 you were most likely pretty tough compared to today’s video game playing recruits. Still, mileage will vary;there are tough guys in every generation.
William L. Shirer, when discussing Hitler Youth and other related Nazi programs:
Of course, that was his anecdotal observation, and I’d think many newly captured POW’s would appear to have “round shoulders”. I don’t know whether the statistics actually bear him out on this point.
I don’t remember which actor it was from ‘Band of Brothers’, but I saw a picture of him standing next to the man he portrayed in the show. Granted, the gentleman was old and probably not as tall as he once was, but there was a huge difference in stature.
Physiques like David Schwimmer’s at that time would probably have been considered huge.
Edit: Goddamn, BoB was good. Haven’t thought about it for a long time. Gonna have to watch it again this winter.
It’s true that in the past mainly dirt poor people enlisted. But one has to assume that in general, once they had been inducted, the military took care to feed them (this is, of course, very generally speaking).
This was BTW one the main reason for social reform in the 19th century: The military noticed that a large number of conscripts was unfit for duty because they had to work 12, 14 hours every day or more under horrible conditions since they were young children.
I think this is the case. There people had to walk almost everywhere they went in life, carrying anything with them. Their general health may not have been as good as in modern times, but the average level of physical fitness would exceed that found today.
We should be careful about what we are comparing. It’s true that in the modern world we’re mostly soft, overweight, and not physically fit. But the modern military won’t take you if you’re seriously unfit, or they’ll whip you into shape.
Comparing average dudes today to average dudes 150 years ago, the older guys would be more “physically fit” in terms of endurance or toughness, but they’ll be pretty sickly and scrawny. Modern average dudes will be healthier, heavier, but weaker.
Comparing average army dudes today to average army dudes 150 years ago, the modern soldier will have much better nutrition and health (both in childhood and while they serve), better physical training, so you’ll have lots of 180-lb slabs of muscle. Not so much with your 140 lb scrawny farm boy during the Civil War. They’ll be tough in some sense, but my WAG is that they’d have less strength and endurance than a modern soldier.
The historical armies did their best to feed the soldiers, but they still had to rely on the few foods that could be stored. In the civil war, that was mostly hard tack, corn meal, and some occasional salt pork. Beans or any kind of fruit or vegetable was practically a luxury. Supply chains could only just barely supply enough to keep scurvy at bay in well-supplied units.
Go to Mexico and take a look at the physical health of your average village person. Yes, they are tough and used to a lot of hard work. But they aren’t slabs of muscle either, working all day every day takes a lot out of you. But if your main qualification for being a solider is being able to hump a pack 20 miles a day in the heat and dust, and then stand in a line with a spear, then that’s enough
My understanding is that from the time of Roman legions under Marius in 100 BC to today, the maximum weight a combat soldier can carry is about 70 pounds. Today’s soldiers are better fed and have better medical care but I think old soldiers had a wiry toughness superior to today. E B Sledge in his memoir of Marines in WW2 “With The Old Breed” talks about one Marine with 25 years service would use a wire brush to clean his testicles in his morning shower.
That cracked me up in the recent Captain America movie - I expect the average Depression-fed Army private looked a lot more like pre-Super Soldier Steve Rogers than otherwise.
In World War 1, about 29% of U.S. draftees were judged unfit for service. In World War 2, with a more thorough and demanding exam, it was something like35%. However, the figure for Korea was 47%. I can’t find a cite for the Vietnam era, but either military standards got a lot tougher during the first half of the 20th Century, or the average Joe was getting in worse and worse shape.