Doctrine, practice and masculinity : physical training in the British Army, 1939-1945

From the 1860s to the end of the Second World War, the British Army produced several iterations of its physical training doctrine. Such material remains, however, a largely untapped resource for researchers, despite considerable scholarly interest in the subject of military masculinity and corporeality. By drawing extensively on the under-utilized resource provided by military instructional material, the present article will argue that physical activity, primarily through bodily exercise, exerted a fundamental influence on the development of an appropriately military-masculine identity in British Army recruits during the Second World War.