Reasons for not being in the first or second world war??

[seaweed]

Were they Merchant Seamen?

[Pheno]

Don't assume also that just because they didn't actually join up and go off to war that they didn't contribute to the war effort.

My dad was in a reserved occupation in WW2 and was never called up but he had to contribute and was required to join the London Fire Brigade to fight fires caused by the bombs.

Pheno

[Billyblue]

As Pheno points out.....
even if they didn't go away to war ....

My Dad (see early reply) as well as running their fresh food business, had to be an air-raid warden in WW1  I found out all this when I found his old warden's handbook one day (when he was in his nineties!)

Dawn M

[arabrab]

My grandfather didn't serve because he was diagnosed with a heart murmur in his medical for WW1
He was most upset as he had been in the local volunteer rifles and was an extremely good shot.
As for his "bad health" , when  he died aged 86  the consultant remarked on his strong heart.

Barbara

[djct59]

My paternal grandfather was 25 when WW1 broke out, and was a bookseller. He did not enlist, which surprised me, until I learned that his father with whom he lived was a former master butcher who had been forced to retire due to incurable locomotor apraxia - a degenerative condition causing uncontrollable muscle spasms, diagnosed in 1911 and from which he died in 1918. Presumably my grandfather had responsibility for him and his own two sisters.

[medpat]

My father wasn't called up because he made parts for spitfires, dad's brother had rheumatic fever as a child and there was concern over his heart so wasn't called up. My maternal uncle didn't go as he worked on the railways.

[ScouseBoy]

The Ministry of Labour  would draft civilian workers to areas or factories  which needed them.

[BumbleB]

Neither my father, nor his father, fought in WW2 or WW1.  My father, however, was involved in the building of Spitfires.  No idea why his father did not participate in WW1, but I'm glad he didn't - I lost my other grandfather who enlisted at the age of 33 and lasted a month in France, with no known grave! 

[PrawnCocktail]

My maternal relatives didn't serve because they were all Durham coal miners, so in a reserved occupation for both wars.

My mother was a teacher, and apparently they were prevented from joining up as well, although the mother of a friend of mine, who was also a teacher, gave up her job, and enlisted by saying she was unemployed. My mother's response to that was to wish she'd thought of that!

My father had just started an engineering apprenticeship in 1939, and he was told to finish his apprenticeship before joining - and once he'd done that, it was near the end of the war, and none of the services appeared to be interested! He had also had rheumatic fever as a child, so that may have also made the services uninterested in him.

His father is a bit of a mystery. He was in the Territorials before WW1 (5th Cheshires), and left them in 1913, but doesn't appear to have ever been called up and sent overseas (no medals), although we found a cap badge for the 22nd Cheshires when we cleared our family home a couple of years ago.