Discusses how armies have used sub-standard manpower in wars from 1860 to the 1960s
Sanders Marble is a historian for the U.S. Army Medical Command. He has written a variety of works about World War I and military medicine.
Marble does us a great service by reminding us of the value of an
inclusive military manpower policy. As a former Director of the
Selective Service System I am all to aware of the cost of excluding
men and women from military service. While on the face of it some
excluded groups may not do as well as the "average" recruit, as a
whole their contributions more than makes up for any extra effort
in bring them through their service. Our ability to discriminate is
so imperfect that It is best to treat each recruit as an
individual, rather than to use the very imperfect and wasteful tool
of stereotyping to fill the ranks.---—Bernard Rostker, RAND
Corporation
What Marble did with Scraping the Barrel is what any good historian
does: inspire questions and leave the reader wanting to investigate
further.
*—H-Net Reviews*
Scraping the Barrel is the first holistic examination of the use of
'sub-standard' personnel in military organizations. The book makes
an excellent contribution to the scholarship on the staffing and
composition of military forces in both peace and war.---—Peter
Mansoor, The Ohio State University
This is an often fascination and well-written collection which
reflects most favorably on its editor and those who have
contributed to it. Together they have produced an important study
in how military organizations, which have at times displayed
considerable prejudice in viewing elements within their own
society, have employed these same substandard forces in order to be
able to continue to wage war.---Ivan Sustersic, —War In History
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