Graph of the killed, wounded and missing

[Ernst]

On internet I found this great link: http://www.nzhistory.net.nz:80/media/photo/first-world-war-casualties-month

It shows the WW1 casualties by month of the New Zealand troops.

I wonder: is there any similar graphic of the British and Commonwealth troops as a whole?

Best regards,

Ernst

[phil andrade]

Thank you Ernst. What stands out there, apart from the terrible casualties suffered by New Zealanders in the Great War, is that the Messines fighting - not the Passchendaele ordeal - is when the figures peak. Most of us associate New Zealand's sacrifice with the October 1917 battles, especially when New Zealanders suffered their worst day and sustained a horrific repulse in thier assault on the Ridge. Now I can understand why it is at Messines where the NZ memorial stands. Then there is September 1918. I'm wondering, though, whether the actual fatalities concur with the graph...some of the 1918 fightng, despite its very high toll in casualties, produced a lower proportion of killed and a much higher ratio of slight wounds and gas cases; I'll look at the monthly totals of killed and see if thisis borne out.

Phil

[nemesis-4u]

Hi Ernst,

Really brings it home when you see details like this.

I'm sure it would be most interesting to see details like this of all the other Countries that took part in the Great War.

I will have a look at the link, Cheers.

Chris Neale.

[dfaulder]

Well, slamming each month into Geoff's (Wondeful) Search Engine, leaving Regiment / Corps as United Kingdom gives:

(The check total is 780,247)

HTH

David

[phil andrade]

David, What is this search engine everybody keeps mentioning ?

The graph speaks loudly, doesn't it ? We all expect July 1916 to be the peak....but look at May 1915 ! An awful month.

Then again, you've got 2nd Ypres, Aubers, Festubert all together, not to mention very fierce Gallipoli fighting. A little confused as to your allusion "leving Regiment/Corps as United Kingdom" : what does this mean ?

Thank you both for these presentations, Ernst and Dave.

Phil

[Guest Rundberg]

David, What is this search engine everybody keeps mentioning ?

Phil

Phil,

Give this link a try:

http://www.hut-six.co.uk/GreatWar/

David & Ernst,

thanks, very interesting!

Cheers,

Chris

[Chris_Baker]

Somewhere I have an Excel model of British and Commonwealth killed, wounded and missing by month by theatre of war. I built it up last year. I'll dig it out and see if I can produce a decent graph. It shows the losses of 1918 to be incredibly high; taking deaths into account only tells one part of the story.

[KevinBattle]

David's excellent graph is even more telling in that there were very few months with less than 5,000 UK dead....

Over 750,000 deaths, without including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa....

[Guest Rundberg]

There is some (depressing...) reading on the subject in The Long, Long Trail:

http://www.1914-1918.net/faq.htm

Chris

[Perth Digger]

The total is nearly 60,000 higher than Jay Winter's revised (and normally accepted) total.

From these one can see how 'fatal' 1918 was. Three months with over 30,000 deaths and nearly 10,000 in the last 11 days of the war!

Well, slamming each month into Geoff's (Wondeful) Search Engine, leaving Regiment / Corps as United Kingdom gives:

(The check total is 780,247)

HTH

David

[dfaulder]

David, >><<A little confused as to your allusion "leaving Regiment/Corps as United Kingdom" : what does this mean ?

>><<

Phil

In Geoff's Search Engine (now I notice retitled Geoff's (Wonderful) Search Engine), you can narrow down your search for casualties by a number of fields before the engine interrogates the CWGC database. One of the Fields is "Regiment/Corps", which gives a pull down list of regiments/units/etc., but also includes "catch all" categories, United Kingdom (default), Australia, Canada, India, South Africa. I used this as a rough proxy for getting at UK deaths; I don't know for sure how G(W)SE uses this data, two alternatives are possible:

1. It filters according to the national affiliation of the regiment (so I would be assuming that everyone in say the York and Lancaster Regiment was "United Kingdom", not necessarily true, but then there were UK nationals in the Indian Army to partly or even over compensate),
2. It uses the "Nationality of casualty" field in the CWGC database

If it is the latter the number should co-incide with known data (although I have cut-off at 11/11/1918). Which-ever it is I thought it would give a useful rough and ready indication.

It sounds as if Chris Baker has some more substantial information. We may even find that someone has been able to do some really heavy-weight analysis. If only we could use something like SQL to interrogate the CWGC website and then pull out interesting data to throw into a cross-tab (or pivot table) to get information like casualties by type by theatre by Arm by date!

I am trying to put my Grandfather's death in context - but it is a struggle to complete a table giving:

columns: 26/04/1918, April 1918, 1918, WW1

rows: 1/4th Y&L, 148th Brigade, 49th Division, Y&L Regiment, UK

as others have said the data is sobering.

David

[Ernst]

Somewhere I have an Excel model of British and Commonwealth killed, wounded and missing by month by theatre of war. I built it up last year. I'll dig it out and see if I can produce a decent graph. It shows the losses of 1918 to be incredibly high; taking deaths into account only tells one part of the story.

I'm really looking forward to it!

[MelPack]

David

Thanks for all your time and effort in pulling together the material for the excellent graph.

Mel

[SiegeGunner]

In Geoff's Search Engine (now I notice retitled Geoff's (Wonderful) Search Engine)

Characteristic modesty on Geoff's part. I recall that when it was first launched, delighted users mostly described it as "Geoff's Very Wonderful Search Engine" or even "Geoff's Extremely Wonderful Search Engine".

[Chris_Baker]

This is a start. I'll try to do some of the detailed extracts tomorrow. This is - all theatres, all British/Commonwealth casualties (killed, died, wounded, missing, POWs), all services, by month. Main sources are Statistics of the British Effort and the Official History of Medical Services.

Of the nine months in which there were more than 100,000 casualties, five of them were in 1918.

"Statistics" by the way gives 908,000 deaths including those who succumbed to illnesses.

[phil andrade]

There is some (depressing...) reading on the subject in The Long, Long Trail:

http://www.1914-1918.net/faq.htm

Chris

Thanks for helping me, Chris.

The tables in the site above make a significant error : they list deaths on the Western Front as 565,000 - that figure is understated, in so far as it does not include about 150,000 others who were initially counted as missing, but were never accounted for and have subsequently been presumed dead. Likewise, the Gallipoli figure of 26,000 is also understated by about fifty per cent. These missing have been included in the death for other fronts, which are vastly overstated.

Phil

[phil andrade]

This is a start. I'll try to do some of the detailed extracts tomorrow. This is - all theatres, all British/Commonwealth casualties (killed, died, wounded, missing, POWs), all services, by month. Main sources are Statistics of the British Effort and the Official History of Medical Services.

Of the nine months in which there were more than 100,000 casualties, five of them were in 1918.

"Statistics" by the way gives 908,000 deaths including those who succumbed to illnesses.

Are you sure these are for all theatres, Chris ? The reason I ask is that the GHQ figures which are used in the work you mention tabulate 196,000 casualties for the month of July 1916 - and that looks very much like the figure in your graph. The trouble is, that was for the Western Front only.

Phil

[dfaulder]

Following my earlier postings in this thread, I have received a PM from Geoff. He has agreed to my request to cross-post the two point he made:

1. A while ago he did a table of casualties by Regiment/Unit. It is on his site here.
2. The nationality data does refer to the nationality of the Regiment or Unit not of the casualty. This follows the CWGC practice (so the dichotomy that I highlighted is false). The CWGC form says "Nationality of force served", so a Canadian who died with the Coldstream Guards would be listed as "United Kingdom" and a Brit who died with the Indian Army would be listed as "Indian".

David

[auditman]

Fascinating set of statistics looking at them in this format. I have a query that follows on a bit. As a general rule of thumb was there an accepted average ratio of wounded to killed in an infantry battalion?

Would this ratio be different for trench duties, when evacuation of wounded could be reasonably quick to taking part in an offensive action where the wounded can be left without treatment for some time?

Thanks

Jim

[Guest Rundberg]

Another question related to numbers/statistics;

How many of the original "Old Contemptibles" survived the war?

Fantastic thread!!!

Chris

[Chris_Baker]

Are you sure these are for all theatres, Chris ? The reason I ask is that the GHQ figures which are used in the work you mention tabulate 196,000 casualties for the month of July 1916 - and that looks very much like the figure in your graph. The trouble is, that was for the Western Front only.

Phil

Ah! Good spot. Looks like in my hurry I graphed the wrong data row. I'll post the totals when I get the chance.

[ulsterlad2]

Somewhere I have an Excel model of British and Commonwealth killed, wounded and missing by month by theatre of war....... It shows the losses of 1918 to be incredibly high .........

Malcolm Brown mentions this, too, in his IWM 1918 book. He says that in what was the 'year of victory' the casualty figures were horrendous.

Apologies. I don't have those figures.

[Charles Fair]

Interesting thread. There is some discussion of turnover in an infantry battalion in this thread: click here.

[phil andrade]

Malcolm Brown mentions this, too, in his IWM 1918 book. He says that in what was the 'year of victory' the casualty figures were horrendous.

Apologies. I don't have those figures.

The British armies on the Western Front suffered higher casualties in 1918 than in any other year, but the figure contained a much higher proportion of prisoners, gassed, and wounded who recovered than previous years - the upshot being that a larger proportion of the British casualties in 1918 lived to return home. Compare these statistics from the Offical Medical history :

1917 Total casualties : 750,249; of whom : killed or died from wounds/gas 212,160; wounded/gassed 514,862; prisoners 23,227.

1918 Total casualties : 876,250; of whom : killed or died from wounds/gas 190,201; wounded/gassed 578,402; prisoners 107,647.

The summary reveals that while nearly thirty per cent of all British battle casualties in France and Flanders in 1917 were fatal, those in 1918 resulted in fatalities of just over twenty per cent.

I thought these figures pertinent in the light of Jim's post (Auditman). Numbers of casualties in themselves do not necessarily convey how lethal the combat was : significantly, the year with the lowest number for the British - 1914 - was the most lethal.

Phil

[phil andrade]

Fascinating set of statistics looking at them in this format. I have a query that follows on a bit. As a general rule of thumb was there an accepted average ratio of wounded to killed in an infantry battalion?

Would this ratio be different for trench duties, when evacuation of wounded could be reasonably quick to taking part in an offensive action where the wounded can be left without treatment for some time?

Thanks

Jim

Perceptive of you, Jim ...too many people just look at the number without analysing the breakdown. My post above, I trust, reflects some light on this.

I'm keen to discuss this further, but am worried that my fixation on statistical analysis of casualty figures is considered distasteful by some of the pals.

Phil