Question: how tall did you have to be to join the army in ww1

title: Recruitment in the British Army
text: The decision to abolish National Service was taken in 1957 with the 1957 Defence White Paper , which led to an enormous reduction in the number of soldiers between 1958 -- 63 , from about 330,000 to 165,000 by the end of National Service . In the decades that followed , cuts in the Army were the constant theme , although they were never on a large scale until the end of the cold war . Between 1963 and 1992 , strength was reduced to 153,000 . In 1990 , the Government started another defence review , which concluded with the Defence White Paper of 1992 . In a post-Soviet world , the white paper would again further reduce the army by 50,000 , effectively ending the British Army of the Rhine . The current strength of the British army is approximately 102,000 regular personnel .