life expectancy

[Ron Clifton]

Perhaps we should also remember that, in the early part of the war, officers were more easily identified by their uniforms (rank badges on cuffs, breeches and boots rather than trousers and puttees) and hence identified as targets by German soldiers in general, and not just snipers.

But I think that PJA may have identified the real cause - in 1914 battle was much more personal, and not "rounded off" by the indiscriminate mass slaughter of the artillery duels etc of the later period.

Ron

[Perth Digger]

May I bring up 'the learning curve' in this context? The different ways in which battles were fought as time past (particularly battlefield tactics) may have had an effect on officer fatalities. Also, in 1918 the role of the officer in March would have been very different from a year earlier, because of the different circumstances. Ditto in the last months of the war, when warfare was more open.

[Guest]

I have just re-read this book while on holiday. I always felt the 'Six Weeks' claim slightly undermines what is otherwise a very worthwhile read. It seemed such an obvious inaccuracy and as it was being used as the title of the book, one might have expected a bit of due diligence on the veracity of the claim.

 

The dust jacket blurb states: "The average life expectancy of a subaltern in the trenches was a mere six weeks". The prologue also describes one officer - 2 Lt Lewes as "...a nearly perfect statistic. He lasted six weeks and four days on the front line: the average time a British Army junior officer survived during the Western Front's bloodiest phases was six weeks". The statistic is rather laboured and is conveniently vague about defining these periods. The book provides a few tenuous references to serving officers who allegedly made the 'Six Weeks' claim and presumably provided the very flimsy foundations for the headline. One of the references was Capt F C Hitchcock's diary "Stand To: A Diary of the Trenches 1915-1918". Hitchcock served in the 2nd Bn Leinster Regt. On page 258 of Hitchcock's diary he writes on Feb 3rd 1917 that:

 

"Officers had simply poured through the Battalion since July 1916. The period covered the actions of Somme, but our death-rate was never so high as it was for the two months at Loos....... A company officers' life with the 2nd Leinsters worked out under 6 weeks". (page 258)

 

The battalion was on the Somme until 28th October 1916. I assume he meant to say that the stats only applied to those who died rather than everyone who served. Hitchcock's diary and the battalion war diary record the names of 65 Officers. The diary rather usefully provides a list of all Officers serving in early July, so it is possible to track the fate of all 65 Officers who served between 1st July 1916 and 3rd Feb 1917 when Hitchcock made his observation.

 

9 of the 65 Officers died within the period (15%). Of these it is possible to reconstruct their date of arrival in the battalion and we find they lasted (on average) for 41 days - just one day short of 6 weeks. One lasted for 13 weeks. Two lasted just 2 weeks. So it seems pretty clear that Hitchcock's observation applied only to those who had died rather than those who served during the period. Not really surprising and not difficult to check, but clearly the qualifier doesn't make for good book titles.

 

Unfortunately something else rather upsets the data: two Officers (Mollman, the Lewis Gun Officer and Murphy) who served within the dates had lasted a bit longer: 447 days (64 weeks) and 471 days (67 weeks) respectively. Also one of the Officers who lasted just two weeks had in fact served at Gallipoli, first entering a theatre of war 526 days (75 weeks) before he was killed. These two facts rather distort the neat 'Six Weeks' theory and push the average time period in theatre before for the 11 Officers who died (within the cohort of 65) to over 22 weeks. MG

Edited 10 September , 2016 by Guest

[phil andrade]

Martin,

One of the most striking features of these investigations that you have carried out is the way in which myths have been debunked, throw away statistical platitudes have been exposed.....and yet, in the course of doing this, you have made us aware of realities that were appalling : the death rates among the original cohorts of the BEF ; the equal ( or even greater ) mortality rates among the men of Gallipoli.

A quasi actuarial analysis that exposes the notorious exaggerations, and, at the same time, demonstrates all too clearly that the reality was not only bad enough, but a nightmare.

All praise to you.

Phil (PJA)

[Terry Carter]

Just bought a used copy of this book and read the Prologue during my break at work and found very interesting. (not read any more of the book so far) I found the story of 2nd Lt Gerald Lewes of the 10 Royal Welsh Fusiliers and an Uppingham School old boy who was killed on the 13 November 1916 very moving. 

So I thought I would find out where the 10 RWF were attacking on that day and it was Serre. I will be visiting the Somme in September and according to the Prologue 2nd Lt Lewes was brought back to our lines by two of his own platoon, therefore he might have a grave and I will put it on my list of places to visit if there is one.

 

However, there is no 2nd Lt Gerald Lewes listed on the CWGC, nor on the Uppingham School War Memorial. The 10 RWF had eight 2nd Lt's killed during the attack on 13 November 1916 and the battalion war diary lists them and Gerald Lewes is not one of them.

 

 

Terry

 

 

[ss002d6252]

16 minutes ago, Terry Carter said:

Just bought a used copy of this book and read the Prologue during my break at work and found very interesting. (not read any more of the book so far) I found the story of 2nd Lt Gerald Lewes of the 10 Royal Welsh Fusiliers and an Uppingham School old boy who was killed on the 13 November 1916 very moving. 

So I thought I would find out where the 10 RWF were attacking on that day and it was Serre. I will be visiting the Somme in September and according to the Prologue 2nd Lt Lewes was brought back to our lines by two of his own platoon, therefore he might have a grave and I will put it on my list of places to visit if there is one.

 

However, there is no 2nd Lt Gerald Lewes listed on the CWGC, nor on the Uppingham School War Memorial. The 10 RWF had eight 2nd Lt's killed during the attack on 13 November 1916 and the battalion war diary lists them and Gerald Lewes is not one of them.

 

 

Terry

 

 

I can't see him in the effects records either  - might be worth a thread of its own ?

 

Craig

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Terry Carter said:

Just bought a used copy of this book and read the Prologue during my break at work and found very interesting. (not read any more of the book so far) I found the story of 2nd Lt Gerald Lewes of the 10 Royal Welsh Fusiliers and an Uppingham School old boy who was killed on the 13 November 1916 very moving. 

So I thought I would find out where the 10 RWF were attacking on that day and it was Serre. I will be visiting the Somme in September and according to the Prologue 2nd Lt Lewes was brought back to our lines by two of his own platoon, therefore he might have a grave and I will put it on my list of places to visit if there is one.

 

However, there is no 2nd Lt Gerald Lewes listed on the CWGC, nor on the Uppingham School War Memorial. The 10 RWF had eight 2nd Lt's killed during the attack on 13 November 1916 and the battalion war diary lists them and Gerald Lewes is not one of them.

 

 

Terry

 

 

 

There is no G Lewes in the May 1915 Army List (The nearest in date I have to the alleged casualty date). Nothing under 10th RWF that relates to Lewes or indeed any of the other named Officer  - "Mr Cadwallader". 

 

10th Bn RWF War Diary makes no mention of either as far as I can see. It is typewritten and easy to read. 

 

A small mystery. MG

[The Inspector]

Hi All

"Mr.Cadwallader":- 

There is a MIC (not sure for what) for a 2nd Lt.Albert Harvey Cadwallader 7th RWF. According to trees on Ancestry he died 1971

Regards Barry

[IPT]

Not only is there no Lewes on the Uppingham roll of honour, but the two men I found who died on that day were Bedfordshire and RND.

 

In real life, did anyone really die with the name of the dear old school on their lips?

[Perth Digger]

If I may return to the six weeks myth, last year I wrote 'Length of Service and Casualty Statistics of Officers on the Western Front: The 1915 Cohort of the 6th Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment'. It may be found on the website below. Jonathan Saunders helped me with it. There is also another short article on the Six Weeks Myth there too.

 

Mike

 

[Guest]

The account is rather strange. It claims to know what the Officer was thinking on the day he allegedly died. It reads like fiction. There are no references or notes. The links to the 10th Bn RWF seem non-existent, so possibly a typo for the battalion.

 

One possibility is that the account was based on a recording of a soldier's memories..or a personal diary.....but if that is the case it seems an odd omission to leave out any reference. It claims he was 19 when he died and had been at Uppingham just six months earlier. i.e. in April 1916.

 

One other possibility is that he was not RWF and was attached from another regiment. The lack of evidence in the CWGC is of course a major problem, particularly given we are led to believe his body was recovered.

 

The BWM roll for the RWF has no subaltern Officer named Lewes. There are over a dozen named Lewis but none initialled G and none died near the date of the alleged event. 

 

For my money there seem to be too many gaps in the chain of evidence.

 

Martin G

[Perth Digger]

John Lewis-Stempel also writes that Lewes received a "posthumous" Mention in Despatch. By which I presume he means that the MID was printed in the London Gazette after his death. But I can't find it.

 

Mike

[Perth Digger]

In addition, he also says that Lewes had served six weeks and four days with the battalion. That makes his arrival on 28 September. No mention in the War Diary on that date, but 7 named officers arrived in that month.

 

Apropos of nothing, a few years ago I wrote to the publishers of a book on Rudolf Hess, to ask the author for the footnote to a vital piece of evidence he had given. The footnote as published was to a PRO document whose number did not exist.  I got no reply. Two years later a German academic discovered that some of the relevant files had had extra pages put into them (the PRO's security is aimed at stopping people walking out with materials, not at people bringing extra materials in!). This scandal was hushed up after it was reported in the Telegraph. I have kept the book as a curiosity.

 

Mike

[Guest]

The Six Weeks claim, most famously recycled and promoted in John Lewis Stempel's book of that title claims the stats related to the 'bloodiest periods' of the war. 

 

I believe nothing was more bloody than 1914 from the perspective of a Battalion Officers. The Infantry's 1914 Star medal roll captures 5,462 Regular Battalion Officers (not including those on the Staff. Of these some 1,829 became fatal casualties  - almost exactly one in every three - and are listed in ODGW. Using the disembarkation dates and their fatal casualty dates it is fairly easy to reconstruct the 'average' time these Officers served before becoming a fatal Casualty

 

23 weeks and 4 days.

 

If we limit the study to the 3,201 Subalterns (Lts and 2 Lts represent 59% of all Battalion Officers on the rolls) some 1,145 ultimately became fatal casualties (36% fatality ratio in case you are wondering). The Subalterns of this cohort who died, served from disembarkation to death for an average of...

 

28 weeks and 4 days

 

Large sampling indicates the Officers of the 1914-15 Star cohort fared slightly better, although there are large skews depending on which theatre they started in. The fatality ratios and length served before becoming a fatal casualty for those who started on the Western Front is broadly longer to the 1914 Star cohort. I think it simply tells us that being a subaltern in 1915 was just as hazardous as 1914 (similar proportions died) but the later cohorts who died, served for longer before meeting their maker. It does also prove the Six Weeks argument, even if restricted to just those who died, is nonsense. At best it is out by a factor of four.

 

MG

Edited 1 September , 2017 by Guest

[charlesmessenger]

Martin

 

A succinct explosion of the myth for which many thanks. What would be interesting is to look at officer survival during the 100 Days and compare that to NW Europe 1944-45. In both cases, thefe is a sense of victory, but some tough fighting with a high officer replacement rate, at least in the infantry.

 

Charles M 

[Guest]

21 hours ago, charlesmessenger said:

Martin

 

A succinct explosion of the myth for which many thanks. What would be interesting is to look at officer survival during the 100 Days and compare that to NW Europe 1944-45. In both cases, thefe is a sense of victory, but some tough fighting with a high officer replacement rate, at least in the infantry.

 

Charles M 

 

Charles - I agree it would be an interesting study, however it would take rather a lot of time to assemble the data.

 

Separately - a slice of 1914-15 Star data: Some 163 Grenadier Guards Officers were awarded the 1914-15 Star. Of these, 59 were killed (36%). For this unfortunate subset, the average time served from disembarkation to death was 43 weeks and 5 days. These battalions of course fought at Loos which was (I think) one of the bloodiest episodes of 1915.

 

MG

Edited 1 September , 2017 by Guest

[Guest]

Some 3,924 Scottish Line Infantry Officers awarded the 1914-15 Star. Of these, 1,427 died during the War (36%). For this sub-set the average time served between disembarkation and death was:

 

58 weeks and 3 days.

 

Or more than twice as long as their brothers in arms who were awarded the 1914 Star and who died during the war. Elements of this second cohort fought at Loos and (separately) at Gallipoli 

Edited 1 September , 2017 by Guest

[Perth Digger]

Martin and Charles

These may interest you.

http://www.greatwarbritishofficers.com/index_htm_files/Length.of.Service 1915.pdf

 

http://www.greatwarbritishofficers.com/index_htm_files/Officers 6 RWK 1916.pdf

 

Mike

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, Perth Digger said:

Martin and Charles

These may interest you.

http://www.greatwarbritishofficers.com/index_htm_files/Length.of.Service 1915.pdf

 

http://www.greatwarbritishofficers.com/index_htm_files/Officers 6 RWK 1916.pdf

 

Mike

 

 

Mike. Thank you. Some very interesting analysis. Your observation on the large differences between the average (mean) and the median are interesting. 

Edited 1 September , 2017 by Guest

[Guest]

There are a number of mitigating factors that might increase Officer life expectancy as the war progressed.

 

1. LOOB. (Left Out of Battle). The earliest evidence I have seen for leaving a proportion of Officers (and men) out of the initial assaults was in June 1915 at Gallipoli. Later on the Western Front it became the norm. In catastrophic assaults at least some would be spared. 

 

2. Dress. Sword-waving went out of fashion in 1914 pretty quickly. There are a number of threads that touch on the subject of when Officers started to dress in Other Rank's tunics. In the IEF-A on the Western Front in 1915 Officers were ordered to wear the same headdress as their Indian soldiers for example. Again this might partially explain why the 1914 Cohorts suffered so terribly compared to later cohorts

 

3. Leave. I don't have the exact details, but at some stage in the War Officers who had served for two years continuously were sent back to the UK for six months' respite. I believe the War Office realised that the mental strain of continuous service was severe and that every man had his breaking point. 

 

4. Time spent in the Front Line. The arrival of the Kitchener Divisions from mid 1915 onward provided much needed relief of the Regular Divisions. Time spent in rotation through the trenches changed. It is an interesting exercise to see how long any battalion spent in the Front Line. Directly related to this is the extremely high skew in casualty data.

 

Taking the 4th Bn Grenadier Guards as an example, 50% of its fatalities (all ranks) occurred over just 8 separate dates. These 8 days represent only 3.2% of the total number of dates the Battalion incurred fatalities and just 0.7% of the time spent on the Western Front.

 

The highest ratio within the Grenadiers was for the 1st Battalion; 50% of its fatalities occurred on just 24 different dates - less than 8% of the total number of dates where fatalities were incurred and just 1.6% of the time spent on the Western Front.

 

Across all four Battalions, 50% of the Grenadier Guards fatalities (all ranks) occurred on just 32 separate dates - 4.3% of all fatal casualty dates and 2.5% of the time the Grenadier Guards spent on the Western Front. This is a direct consequence of long period out of the line followed by near disastrous actions followed by more time out of the line to rebuild refit and retrain....to be repeated again months later.

 

 

[stiletto_33853]

Martin,

Something I placed in another thread on life in the tenches might be of use. This only counts the dead from the Q.M.'s count as in immediate deaths, CWGC count 

is 1729.

 

Major J.H. Aldridge of the 2nd Rifle Brigade broke down his time with the battalion as follows (not sure if it is of interest)

Strength of battalion on landing in France 5/11/14

29 officers

983 other ranks

re-inforcements received up to 11/11/18

Officers 314

other ranks 7,343

1 officer and 14 other ranks of the original battalion returned home with the battalion HQ after the war, the only originals.

Casualties

Officers killed 73

Officers Wounded and missing 161

other ranks killed 719

wounded and missing 4,728

The four years and six days during which the battalion was on active service were spent as follows:-

In battle 73 days

On outpost 12 days

In trenches 1 year 131 days

On line of march and in trains 66 days

In bivouac, camp or billets 2 years 90 days

total 4 years 6 days

The longest period in the trenches without relief was forty days, viz: 5th August 1918 to 14th September 1918

The following have been the awards to the battalion:

V.C. 3

Brevets 5

CMG 2

DSO 7

DSO Bar 1

MC 27

Bar to MC 5

DCM 35

Bar to DCM 1

MBE 1

MM 108

Bar to MM 6

MSM 7

Foreign Decorations 6

Parchment Certificates by GOC Division 66

MID's 88

In all General Despatches of the G in C, the CO of the battalion has been mentioned

During the war the battalion had:-

10 Lieutenant Colonels

12 Majors 2nd in Command

10 Adjutants

1 QM

5 Transport Officers

6 Medical Officers

4 Interpreters

7 Chaplains

6 Regimental Sergeant Majors

3 Regimental QM Sergeants

Off the Colonels

3 were promoted General Officers

2 were killed

3 were wounded

1 to Command 13th battalion

1 Returned Home in Command.

It has served in the following British Corps:-

I, II, III, IV, VIII, IX, X, XIV, XV, XVIII, XIX, XXII, Indian, Australian, and IInd Anzac. In all British Armies except the IIIrd and also in two French Armies.

The 1st Line Transport of the battalion moved it's line and standing on 179 different occasions. Of the original animals that landed in France with the battalion, ten horses and eight mules were with it throughout the war.

Andy

[Perth Digger]

Martin

Fascinating data. I'm pretty sure that similar results would come with the Coldstream data. Would you agree that the Guards were used differently, though? I wouldn't say that they were shock troops, but they were special event units, if you like, and held over for quite long periods at times. 

 

Would the results look different if 1914 was excluded?

 

Mike

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Perth Digger said:

Martin

Fascinating data. I'm pretty sure that similar results would come with the Coldstream data. Would you agree that the Guards were used differently, though? I wouldn't say that they were shock troops, but they were special event units, if you like, and held over for quite long periods at times. 

 

Would the results look different if 1914 was excluded?

 

Mike

 

The Coldstream Officers' data is quite similar. I have done the same exercise but the data needs to be double-checked and resolved against ODGW. First run indicates

 

Grenadier Guards: 163 Officer, 58 fatalities (36%) D2D Mean 46 weeks. Median 33 weeks 

Coldstream Guards:173 Officers, 49 fatalities (28%). D2D Mean 50 weeks. Median is 48 weeks

Scots Guards: 83 Officers, 19 fatalities (23%). D2D Mean: 43 weeks, Median 19 weeks

Irish Guards: 85 Officers, 36 fatalities (42%) D2D Mean 66 weeks, Median 56 weeks

 

Note these are very preliminary figures. There would have to be some gigantic errors to come close to 6 weeks. Where disembarkation dates are not recorded, the data has not been used. 

 

I don't know how the Guards Div was used compared to other Divisions on the Western Front. When I transcribed the Grenadier Guards diaries I was very struck by the long periods spent in training between set piece battles - something that does not come across in their published histories which tend to concertina events. Even if the Guards Div was used differently my sense is that all regular Divisions were used until 'spent', then withdrawn, rebuilt and refitted and retrained and then put back into the line. I suspect the data across regular Divisions on the Western Front would not be radically different. I have an interest in the 29th Div and may well run the data....

 

The 1914 cohorts at battalion level were markedly similar, with perhaps Gheluvelt 30th-31st Oct 1914 being  an out-lier in the casualty data. Similarly if one looks at the German offensive in March 1918, any units flattened by that steamroller would stand out; elements of the 4th Guards Brigade (if memory serves) fought to the last round in one particular action and heavily skews the data. I suspect most Battalions, Brigade and Divisions had a particularly acute rendezvous with death While their individual experiences were of cours different, I would be surprised if fatal casualty was outsise two standard deviations. This is big data and it is statistically difficult to remain as a large out-lier consistently over 4 years of fighting. 

 

I think the data would look more different if 1914 was excluded. To my mind 1914 was the bloodiest period when casualties are measured as a percent of numbers engaged. The media and some authors get fixated on absolute numbers rather than the proportions of casualties/engaged.

 

Relating this to "Six Weeks" it seems so unlikely as to be an extremely rare event for any unit's cohort of Officers to last this short a time. There are of course examples of every officer becoming a casualty in 1914, at Neuve Chapelle, Loos, Gallipoli etc but these were typically spread out over longer periods.

 

One of the many sources of the myth was Hitchcock's memoir "Stand To!". I poured over the diaries and did some analysis that seem to show his claims were not remotely possible (assuming his observations were about those who had been killed). I have recently taken possession of the Leinster's history and will go over the data again in case the diaries made omissions. 

 

Separately, while not a perfect data set, the 1914-15 Star  Officers' medal rolls should at least provide a statistically meaningful sample to test the Six Weeks theory. I have large samples (Guards, Scots, Irish etc which come nowhere close) but it is not complete. I will revert with the data by Regiment. It should have the added benefit of being able to filter the data by theatre and time frame. I may be some time.....

 

MG

Edited 1 September , 2017 by Guest

[Perth Digger]

Martin

The French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie once wrote that historians are either parachutists or truffle hunters, the former floating down and seeing the wider picture, the latter snuffling around the undergrowth looking for unconsidered trifles. I think you're at one end of that spectrum and I'm at the other, but share the same general questions that want answering.

 

Mike

[trajan]

8 minutes ago, Perth Digger said:

... historians are either parachutists or truffle hunters, the former floating down and seeing the wider picture, the latter snuffling around the undergrowth looking for unconsidered trifles. ...

 

Nice one! Well, being more of a "truffle hunter" in both GW and Roman military affairs, I would only say that the parachutists enjoy a much better diet with what we snufflers find for them!