Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel didn’t meet the weight requirement to serve in the French military, but he was able to join a medical unit and then became a truck driver, transporting supplies to the French lines in Verdun. He was discharged after suffering a series of illnesses.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Vaughan Williams interrupted the writing of his "Lark Ascending" and enlisted in the British army at the end of 1914, serving in France and Greece. 

 Gustav Holst

Holst tried several times to enlist in the British services, but he was deemed unfit for active service. Eventually the YMCA tapped him in 1918 to be a music organizer in the Near East, and Holst set off to Salonika in northern Greece where he taught and arranged concerts for British soldiers.

 Fritz Kreisler

 39-year-old violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler served in the Austrian army’s Fourth Battalion. Kreisler was injured in battle in a skirmish against Russian forces on the eastern front and was sent home after barely one month.He recovered enough to resume playing the violin, but left war-torn Europe for the United States at the end of 1914, and published his memoir Four Weeks in the Trenches a year later.