BEF 1914 - Early Disembarkation and Survivability

[Guest]

" Your posts excite my admiration, Mike," Now why don't they do the same for Anneca?

" not only because you have at your fingertips such an array of contemporaneous commentary : " It's mainly the British Newspaper Archive which has a tremendous search facility, in this case it was the British Medical Journal.

" you also display discernment in how you deploy it. " More accident than design.

It's one thing knowing how to find stuff, quite another making sense of it. Will leave that to you, Martin and others.

Mike

[Guest]

Phil - this is a natural offshoot from this OP and is welcome. It might be worth starting a thread on Officer survivability rates as it may attract more responses. The risk is that it becomes buried under the current title of this thread.

I have a deep interest in the thematic you mention. I have often wondered about the 'Six Weeks' arguments. I aimed at one stage to crunch the numbers. Not yet done. Separately I have just had my Bond of Sacrifice digitised and professionally edited which now provides perfect data for over 1,000 Officer fatalities in 1914. I have most battalion Officer nominal rolls for disembarkation and have data on their fates...I simply have not yet got round to consolidating the data. This might be an opportune moment.

It would be interesting to survey the Somme data for the dates of the Battle Honour, to get a more defined sample rather than 1916 as a whole.

I have often thought that the casualty ratios on the Somme might have been exceeded by other periods - 1914 (particularly Ypres) and possibly Gallipoli (August 1915). By this I mean battle casualties as a per cent of front line units deployed. It is a subject potentially fraught with challenges and assumptions, but still, it would be an interesting study. If you prefer to keep the Officer debate within this thread I really don't mind - after all threads have many strands....just a suggestion as I think by opening a new thread it will get more attention.

Might I suggest two approaches - the aggregate approach - covering all who served within the period(s), and the 'original' approach. The latter has the advantage that it is clearly defined by starting date and number - measuring what happened to the men who started on , say 1st July 1916 (Somme), or 8th Aug 1915 at Gallipoli, or Aug 1914,. This might provide different data and some interesting sub-themes. i.e. was there a split between regular and TF as the aggregate SMEBE data suggests?

If data is collated in a standard framework it might prove useful. I know some colleagues are interested in the fates of Commanding Officers for example and others interested in the fatality ratios by rank etc.

MG

[Guest]

Will leave that to you, Martin and others.

Mike

This is very much a collaborative effort. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. No 'I' in the word team and all that. Your contributions are greatly appreciated by everyone I am sure....

[phil andrade]

Martin,

Much encouraged by your endorsement of the theme I've been harping on here, I'm also anxious not to divert the thread.

I would like to say, though, that I've tried to expand the subject a bit by alluding to French, German , Austrian and Russian experience too ; and, I'm sure you've noticed, by mentioning the Gallipoli stats : the Kiwi record there, and the dreadful officer fatality rate, has rather grabbed me.

Being that this is on the " Other" section of the Forum, I thought it might be apt to countenance theatres other than the Western Front ; the reference to the Boer War also has some merit, I think, because it brings to mind the previous experience that the BMJ article that Mike posted alludes to.

It also, I hope, puts the experience of the men of the BEF in 1914 into a wider perspective, with the ordeal of their continental counterparts providing a backdrop to what we're discussing.

Phil (PJA)

[Guest]

A few hours in the West Sussex Records Office provided some very interesting data. I mentioned earlier that the Royal Sussex Regt has a ledger listing every man who embarked. It covers the whole war and has more detail than I have seen before.

The dates of disembarkation, dates joined the battalion and dates wounded or returned to the UK, dates returned to battalion as recovered wounded etc. quite remarkable. I have yet to add all the data to the medal roll, but early indications are that well over 90% of the men on the 1914 Star roll who were not killed were sent back to the UK at some stage. More interestingly most appear to have been sent back within 12 months and dates have a high correlation with costly actions. It is easier to count those not sent back. It is interesting as it may well provide hard data supporting the idea that over 60% of the men were wounded. It also should provide some reference data for the numbers who recovered from wounds and sickness and how quickly this happened.

I will report back once the data is loaded. MG

[Muerrisch]

Martin, the jewel in the crown for me would be if the data can detect recycling of sick/ wounded BACK TO ORIGINAL UNIT .......... how quickly, and how many. [The medal roll should, I believe, show postings of recovered wounded out, typically to Labour Corps or non teeth arms].

[phil andrade]

Those poor guys were not only exposed to uniquely intense and deadly combat, they also underwent the ordeal of being " rotated " through convalescence and re-deployment.

How dreadful to have to go back and face the music.

It would be worthwhile investigating the resources of humour and espirit de corps that kept them going.

Phil (PJA)

[Guest]

Martin, the jewel in the crown for me would be if the data can detect recycling of sick/ wounded BACK TO ORIGINAL UNIT .......... how quickly, and how many. [The medal roll should, I believe, show postings of recovered wounded out, typically to Labour Corps or non teeth arms].

It does.

[Guest]

Birmingham Daily Post - Friday 12 February 1915 British Newspaper Archive

The British Casualties

Large Percentage of Wounded Again Fit for Service

Sir G Scott Robertson (L-Bradford, Central) asked the Prime Minister if he could say how many out of the 104,000 casualties in the Expeditionary Force had now returned to duty. Mr Asquith (Prime Minister): I do not think it would be in the public interest to give the exact figures, but my Hon. friend and the house will be glad to know about 60% of the wounded have recovered and are fit for service.

Mike

[johnboy]

Returning to duty and returning and going back to their fighting battalions are two different things. Maybe somewhere there is data showing figures numbers for each type of wound?

If the majority of wounds were for instance. to the legs, then would it be reasonable to think that a large number would not have returned to an infantry battalion on account of the marching and running involved?

[Guest]

So far crunched surnames beginning with A and B, - 135 men or roughly speaking a 13% of the Main Body cohort of 2nd Bn Royal Sussex regt. If it is any indication it looks like it might provide critical hard evidence:

Fatalities (KIA, DOW, Died etc)..............28.......20.7%

Evacuated to England............................95.......70.4% ................of which 11 were KIA later in the War

POW........................................................2

Transferred to other units........................4

Deserter...................................................1

No records...............................................5

Of the 95 men evacuated to England 81% were evacuated within a year of disembarking. 46 men returned to the battalion and 14 returned to duty with a Kitchener Battalion (total 60 of 95 = 52.6% returned to front-line duty with the regiment). The time lag between evacuation to England and returning to duty averaged 191 days ( 27 weeks). This last data point is particularly interesting as it may provide evidence that the recycling of the wounded was a particularly slow process. The shortest time from evacuation to re-embarking was 19 days. The next shortest was 69 days and the third shortest was 114 days (16 weeks). The point here is that while some men recovered within a short period, these were exceptional cases.If the average time exceeded 27 weeks we begin to see the challenges for battalions in 1914.

If is very important to remember that the above data is based on a 13% sample and is therefore not statistically robust. I will post once the data for the 1,019 men of the main body is complete,. I thought a snapshot would be of interest. 91% of this small group either killed or evacuated back to England wounded or sick. Only 2 men appear to have served through to discharge in 1919 with the battalion - just 1.4%. Lots to mull over.

Any mistakes are mine. MG

[phil andrade]

Martin,

Forgive me for being thick....the table has confused me.

The 28 fatalities....am I right in assuming that these were incurred in the 1914-15 Star period, and that the 11 subsequently killed died after the expiration of the period covered by the Star ?

You've probably already covered this, and I've been too dopey or lazy to do proper justice to your posts.

Phil (PJA)

[Guest]

Martin,

Forgive me for being thick....the table has confused me.

The 28 fatalities....am I right in assuming that these were incurred in the 1914-15 Star period, and that the 11 subsequently killed died after the expiration of the period covered by the Star ?

You've probably already covered this, and I've been too dopey or lazy to do proper justice to your posts.

Phil (PJA)

It is merely the sequence of events. The 11 men were either wounded or sick, evacuated, and re-embarked and subsequently killed later in the war. The other 28 were killed without having returned to England. These men were all killed within a year of disembarkation.

By showing the initial battle casualties I hope to show the proportions of wounded to killed in the first year. What I am trying to show is what happened to the men who disembarked with the main body, so I have chosen to categorise these 11 men (initially as wounded/sick evacuated to England).

The spreadsheet has multiple columns. One column is from the 1914 and 1914-15 Star medal roll which will show if a man was killed, transferred, discharged etc. What it doesn't show is whether the man was wounded (and when). The simplistic analysis based on the medal rolls was to assume the discharged represented a significant proportion of the wounded and sick.What I want to show is the actual (rather than estimated) proportions of killed to wounded to see if this has any correlation with the macro data in Medstats etc.

The actual data that I have been desperately seeking is in the ledger. To keep the data separate from the data in the medal roll I have entered the RSR data in a separate column. In some cases, men were wounded in 1914 soon after disembarking, returned to the UK, re-embarked to rejoin the battalion and subsequently wounded or killed.

There are one or two men who were wounded three times and did three trips back to the UK before being killed on their fourth tour of duty. The detail in the data is very revealling as it will be possible to determine exactly waht happened to all 1,019 men.

One all the data has been crunched, all will become a lot clearer. My sense so far, and glancing at the pages yet to be transcribed is that less than 5% of men were unscathed (the subject of the OP). Of these more than half were transferred elsewher, meaning there will probably be around 15 men who served continuously with the battalion and were not wounded. To this I expect there will be another 23 or so who were transferred to other front line units such as the MGC who certainly made it through to the end alive, but may need some more research to establish if they were wounded. Bottom line at most 3.7% made it through unscathed and 1.5% made it through unscathed with the battalion for the duration of the war.

More to come. MG

[Guest]

Here is a sample of the ledger*. Note some real Gems:

• Date of embarkation (first column after surname) - these do not always align with the medal roll dates.
• Date joined Battalion (second column) - not everyone has this entry but useful nonetheless as it allows us to see typical time lags held at Base
• Wounded - pretty clear. Note some return straight to the battalion while others are subsequently 'To England'
• To England - not 100% sure on this. Current thoughts are these are the men evacuated wounded and sick. The numbers are simply huge, about 90% of the men who survived have this entry with date.
  
• ..and what appears to be a fused H and P: HP. Given it is in every case followed by 'To England' I am assuming this means Hospital

Any thoughts would be welcome. MG

Edit... there are old Regulars, young regulars, SR men, Kitchener recruits (Bumstead - note this is at the end of Nov 1914) all mixed together. Wounded, evacuated, re-embarked, sent off to Kitchener battalions, sent to Prison, declared only fit for Home service, deserters, killed etc...all with dates. Simply a goldmine of data. MG

[Muerrisch]

Martin, a Diamond mine more like!.

The first column puzzles me: regimental numbers one supposes? If so, some are strange. I can live with 10494 Kitchener and 6400 as regular ...... are 2250, 2187, 1792 ancient warriors? And 10, 67, 48, 189 either SR or Kitchener? I will look to see if Paul Nixon can shed some light on this.

I expect you will also encounter Tof E [Term of Engagement] or similar for a regular discharged after being held to serve his extra year for King and Country ...... the men due to be released after serving 12 years with the colours, and the reservists called to the colours.

Brain whirring ................

Nixon says this about Kitchener numbers

10276 joined on 3rd February 1914

The First World War

When Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914 and her infantry regiments expanded with new the addition of new war-time “service” battalions, it was common for these new battalions (with the notable exception of the Pals-type battalions) to continue numbering men in the same series that had, up until then, been in use by the regular battalions. Not so The Royal Sussex Regiment. War-time service enlistments – which I’ll cover in more depth in a future posts – were given numbers from a new series beginning with 1 and prefixed with the letter G/, whilst men who, during the war years, continued to join up for regular terms of enlistment with the Royal Sussex Regiment, continued to be numbered from the original series (their numbers for the most part prefixed with L/.) The South Down battalions which were Pals-type battalions also had their own separate number series prefixed with SD/.

and Nixon on SR battalion:

For the 3rd Royal Sussex Regiment though, I’ll start the army service numbers sequence in June 1908 with new recruits to the battalion who had no prior militia service.

319 joined on 9th June 1908
670 joined on 7th January 1909
1043 joined on 15th March 1910
1358 joined on 25th April 1911
1640 joined on 17th April 1912
1858 joined on 8th February 1913
2149 joined on 11th June 1914
2190 joined on 7th August 1914

It is common to see the prefix LSR/ or L/SR/ on these numbers issued to Special Reservists of the Royal Sussex Regiment. My data for these men ends in late August 1914 at LSR/2300 but numbering certainly extended into the 2400s and the numbering story for this battalion does not end here.

In August 1914, a second army service number series for General Service Special Reserve recruits was set up, these numbers prefixed with GSSR/.

4 joined on 13th August 1914
224 joined on 1st September 1914
704 joined on 1st October 1914
921 joined on 6th November 1914

My data for this number series ends at GSSR/931 and I believe that both the series, and recruitment directly into the Special Reserve, were abandoned at around the same time.

[Guest]

I have gone a little bit further than Paul Nixon on the RSR. I am very confident of the numbers in the 10400 series include the first Kitchener recruits. 10403 enlisted on 7th August 1914 and I have men in the 1038x series enlisting as late as June 1914.

The medal Rolls show the SR and GSSR men and L men etc quite clearly. It is reasonably easy to identify them. Given I am transcribing both databases into one, the final product will be able to filter these out. the prefixes are not shown on the ledger but are (mostly) shown on the medal rolls so between the two databases I should be able to reconstruct 90% of the picture. viz

 

GSSR 10 Byrne G

LSR 2250 Bourne H

LSR 2187 Bourke E

GSSR 67 Bartram A

LSR 1792 Burtenshaw H

GSSR 48 Blackman W

LSR 129 Bell F

L 10494 Bumstead E (enlisted 12th Aug 1914)

L 6400 Barnard H (enlisted in 1901)

 

Quite a spread of types. only 4,094 recruits and 13 years difference between Barnard (presumably Section D or possible extended service) and Bumstead (Kitchener Recruit). As you say...a diamond mine. MG

Edited 11 January , 2018 by Guest

[Muerrisch]

Another searchlight shone in a dark corner ...... very well done indeed Martin

[Guest]

Another searchlight shone in a dark corner ...... very well done indeed Martin

I had a few people point me in the right direction and a lot of help. The kindness of strangers. MG

[westkent78]

Just imagine if more museums/archives have these ledgers. I wonder if this was just a Royal Sussex phenomenon or each regiment had them but most disposed of them post-war? It would seem a sensible approach for each regimental depot to maintain one.

Matthew

[ss002d6252]

Just imagine if more museums/archives have these ledgers. I wonder if this was just a Royal Sussex phenomenon or each regiment had them but most disposed of them post-war? It would seem a sensible approach for each regimental depot to maintain one.

Matthew

I do always wonder how much information is sat in a box in the corner of an archive just waiting to be re-discovered.

Craig

[Guest]

I do always wonder how much information is sat in a box in the corner of an archive just waiting to be re-discovered.

Craig

I hope there are lots. Even if it is there it still needs to be transcribed. I have a strong belief that data begins to live again once it has been transcribed. It becomes mobile and can be manipulated (in a positive sense). If handled with care we can begin to extract important information from it that perhaps was hidden from sight or was not accessible to previous generations. Having the ability to process thousands of names in seconds and manipulate the data in a myriad of ways opens new avenues. Technology is providing unprecedented levels of access and power that is unlocking hidden information. If this task was done manually it would take years rather than days. As we add more data the value increases exponentially.

We have barely scratched the surface. One day the whole of the ledger will be transcribed, and it will show us exactly what happened to some 25,000 men in just one regiment. That really would be interesting,especially when integrated with the diaries and histories. MG

[Muerrisch]

The best targets would be those regiments with a single regular battalion in F&F thus minimising complication of a complicated subject.

[ss002d6252]

Technology is providing unprecedented levels of access and power that is unlocking hidden information. If this task was done manually it would take years rather than days. As we add more data the value increases exponentially.

To gather my 6th DLI data has taken several years - with the medal rolls on-line I've built up 50%+ of the men for the 7th DLI in a few days. Technology can certainly be a bonus.

The data put together is the key - I'm pretty confident I've put together data in one place on the 6th in a way that has never been done since the war and possibly not even then.

What it is helping with is my side project of the number of men discharged Time Expired from the T.F. and the impact (at whatever level this had - I remain open minded) - your spreadsheet has helped enormously as I can now work some rough averages.

Craig

[Guest]

Half way through the Main Body. Only 1.7% made it to demobilisation in 1919 with the battalion without being wounded or hospitalised. Some may have got to demob having been transferred out but It seem they are highly correlated with hospitalisation, wounded or both. 95% correlation. If these stats hold for the other half of the battalion if will mean only 18 men made it through unharmed with the battalion. These numbers are consistent with anecdotal evidence from other infantry battalion histories.

The thing that continues to surprise is that fatality rates are still high at 30%. I had expected the data to dampen down further as I filled the gaps. The other surprising factor is the number of men wounded multiple times and the number of men hospitalised multiple times. One man went through the mill five times. Three times was not uncommon. For the survivors, hospitalisation rates were 141%.

MG.

Edit:

For the Main Body cohort:

Of the fatalities,............... 45% occurred in 1914 and 65% occurred within 12 months of disembarking

Of the hospital* cases......63% occurred in 1914 and 83% occurred within 12 months of disembarking

Combined.........................55% occurred in 1914 and 75% occurred within 12 months of disembarking.

* Wounded, evacuated to England and hospitalised combined.

[Guest]

Finally finished the Main Body. Only 1.8% made it to demobilisation in 1919 with the battalion without being wounded or hospitalised. Some made it to demobilistion having been transferred out. The 50% sample (see above) proved to be a good indicator. 18 men out of 1.014* made it through unscathed with the Battalion. A fair number of these has been employed in HQs. The number serving continuously without being temporarily posted away and coming through unscathed or not having been hospitalised was just 12, men or 1.2%.

Fatalities were 32.1%

I have some number crunching to do and some charts to create. It will be fascinating reading. The Life and Death of a battalion. MG

* There were 5 duplicates.

MG.