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In Little Women the girls' father Mr. March was too old to serve in the Civil War as a solder, but he still wanted to help. He signed up as a chaplain instead.
mudshark: I don't expect Nate to make sense, really.
That's an example.
There are also stories of underaged boys who lied about their age just to fight, and senior citizens like Nikolai Morozov
, who fought in WW 2 at the age of 88.
I checked the trope pages for Draft Dodging and Conscription and nothing shows up there, so it seems like there is no trope for it, but it probably could become one.
Another example:
In Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers is never drafted and is rejected from enlisting multiple times, until he gets some strings pulled to join as part of the super soldier experiment.
Edited by Eirenicon
Women who disguised themselves as men and joined either side during the American Civil War also existed. Of course, they were ejected upon being discovered, perhaps by being wounded or falling ill.
Do we have a trope where someone wants to fight for their country, but their circumstance is unable to in regards of conscription, such as being too old or too young or too short or disabled, or in historical cases, being a woman or is LGBTQ+, but still willing to fight?