mike n Posted 9 November , 2011 Share Posted 9 November , 2011 Does anybody know how many troops from the original troops managed to survive the war Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phil andrade Posted 9 November , 2011 Share Posted 9 November , 2011 What a hard question ! There is one summary of an infantry battalion's experience on the Western Front from the beginning to the end of the war, and this indicates that one out of every six men who served at one time or another throughout the fifty one months of war was killed, and that more than twice as many were wounded...in other words, a minority escaped unscathed. And this, it must be noted, was for the entire war - if we were to focus on those who were there at the start, I'm sure that the fatality rate wuld be at least twice as high. More than that, this refers to a British unit, and it's important to remember that death rates among French and German soldiers were significantly higher. edit : the source, cited in Terraine's The Smoke and the Fire, tabulates 8,313 who passed thriugh the Battalion, of whom 1,462 ( more than one in six) were killed, and 3,648 were wounded or gassed: a casualty rate of more than sixty per cent. My guess is that, of the original muster that went out to France in August 1914, the death rate would have been about one in three, and the additional wounded would have left only a small proportion unscathed. Phil (PJA) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike n Posted 10 November , 2011 Author Share Posted 10 November , 2011 I was curious as after one action of the 5th Div they quote a casulty rate of some 10,000 for the division which was high and no doubt no different a number than could be applied to any other front line division / unit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris_Baker Posted 10 November , 2011 Share Posted 10 November , 2011 Just under 8.7 million men served in the British Army in the Great War. Just under 8 million survived it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Tom Posted 10 November , 2011 Share Posted 10 November , 2011 I guess that the question was with regard to the members of the BEF that deployed in 1914 and the poser wondered how many of these survived. I suppose that its units and formations were engaged in more operations than the Territorial and New Army units and formations and that therefore the proportion of survivors would be lower than for the army as a whole. Old Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truthergw Posted 10 November , 2011 Share Posted 10 November , 2011 I was curious as after one action of the 5th Div they quote a casulty rate of some 10,000 for the division which was high and no doubt no different a number than could be applied to any other front line division / unit That is extremely high for one action. A division would number some 16000 to 18000 troops, all told. The figure you quote would be in the region of fifty eight percent casualties. However, a division would only number some 12000 active troops so really we are talking about virtual annihilation. I cannot remember reading of any unit suffering casualties of this intensity. Can you say which action this was? Edited to include fighting troops in addition to infantry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muerrisch Posted 10 November , 2011 Share Posted 10 November , 2011 THE STATISTICS OF SURVIVAL: 2nd RWF, a fighting regular battalion, the second unit into France by a short head, and which spent all the war on the Western Front. In Chapter XXVII of Old Soldiers Never Die Frank Richards says "with the exception of some men of the trans¬port there were not more than two or three of us left that had seen it through since the commencement […]. I expect we had pulled off a twenty-thousand-to-one chance". The purpose of this note is to examine the truth or likelihood of this state¬ment. If he meant started with, and finished with, and without sub-stantial interrup¬tion, he is clearly made a pessimist by the famous photo-graph (reproduced in this book) which includes ten who are supposed to have served thus. Setting aside those who were already, or had become, com¬missioned, we have seven men, added to which we have Richards and his cronies [at least] who had departed before May 1919 when the group was photo¬graphed. Of those other ranks who started with Richards (a simple yard¬stick is to count those who have the clasp to the 1914 star), about 500 can be identified, al¬though, of course, including reinforcements etc, the true total is about 1300 (the clasp had to be applied for but many did not bother, then or later). So, on this simple test, Richards seems to have had at least a ten in one thousand chance, or one in a hun¬dred. In fact, it was much better than that. Did he, one wonders, mean "un-scathed"? The transport and the drums were acknowledged to be safer appointments, and it was amongst these that Dunn reported most of the 80 old soldiers in 2nd RWF on 31 December 1917. Of course, not all would have started with 2nd RWF, but perhaps half would (the remainder with 1st RWF), and more would die or be wounded by the end of the war. They were still there, dying, during the Advance to Victory, about 1 in 20 of the dead (out of over sixty) having old soldiers' regimental numbers, not in safe appointments. It is possible to examine Richards's chances by simple statistics. Firstly, it is a well-known fact that the proportion of killed-in-action to wounded was remarkably steady at about one to two. Of the two wound¬ed, some died of wounds, some were crippled never to return, some re¬covered and were re-cycled through the war ma¬chine, some with their original battalion, many not. This one to two ratio is observ¬able on the macro scale and the micro, from "Statistics of the Military Effort" to indi¬vidual units such as the Newfoundland Regiment on the first day of the Somme bat¬tle. As we do not have detailed daily returns of wounded to the same degree of accu¬racy as the killed, it is reasonable to assume that 2nd RWF's experience of battle, when in battle, was not atypical. Duty Done gives day-by-day totals of killed. On the above assumption that each day with one man killed generated, on average, two more men wounded, we can attempt a day-by-day calculation of the chance of a given soldier (Richards?) being unscathed that day. We need one more assumption, that is, of the num¬ber of men actually "at risk". With a very few exceptions, it is not 1000 men, nor is it 100 men. In defence, and in attack, the battalion, in common with the whole army, had some "up", some in immediate re¬serve, and, in the latter half of the war, some in Battle Surplus. Added to which, absence sick, absence on leave, on courses and the like, ensured that units were often lucky to have as many as 500 "at risk". So this is the figure used, as it can not be adduced for each separate day (inter¬estingly, the statistics are remarkably insensitive to this figure, so long as a reason¬able estimate is used). The calculation is made by multiplying [not adding, the events are each inde¬pendent] each day's chance of being unscathed with each suc-ceeding day: Richards was either hit, or not, and each day he shared the risk with, say, 499 other men, of whom either none, three, six, nine etc were hit. So the days at La Cordonnerie pro¬duce 497/500 [that is 1 dead, 2 assumed wounded] x 497/500 x 494/500 [2 dead, four wounded] x 470/500 [10 dead, 20 wounded] x etc etc. The number crunching pro¬duces almost ex-actly a one in twenty chance of Richards (or any given individual) coming un¬scathed through the war even if he served every day with 2nd RWF. The only terms that play much part in the equation are the bad casualty days, such as High Wood, Plum Lane, Red Dragon. My conclusion is that Frank Richards can be shown to be wrong by a very substantial margin. There were probably about 25 men in 2nd RWF making the same claim to extreme good fortune at the same time that he was making it. This above from OSND 2001 edition As a postscript, taking the overall dead of the battalion, all causes, at any date, together with the best estimate of the number who passed through it including the originals, we have above 1300 out of 5000 dead, and, say 2600 wounded/gassed etc, leaving some 1100 unscathed except, most probably mentally. It needs to be borne in mind that a large proportion of long-serving soldiers filtered back to Labour battalions, no sinecure, but safer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phil andrade Posted 10 November , 2011 Share Posted 10 November , 2011 Firstly, it is a well-known fact that the proportion of killed-in-action to wounded was remarkably steady at about one to two. Of the two wound¬ed, some died of wounds, Forgive a quibble here....this proportion varied considerably, depending on the exigencies of combat in different battle conditions. Overall, according to the official medical statistics of the British armies 1914-1918, the Western Front produced 3.78 wounded or gassed for every one who was killed in action. If we then allow for the wounded ( or gassed) who died, the total becomes 2.7 wounded for every battle death. A striking feature is how different the proportions were in the first months of the war. In 1914, there were 2.4 wounded for every man who was killed or died from wounds : in 1918, there were more than three wounded/gassed to every one killed or died from wounds. A man who was struck down in battle in 1914 was twenty per cent more likely to be killed outright or die from his wounds than his counterpart who became a casualty in 1918. Our original poster was referring to front line troops who survived from the begginning of the war, and I think it's fair to suppose that the soldiers who fought for the BEF in 1914 endured a significantly higher fatality rate than those who fought in 1918. Hence my guess that, if rather more than one sixth of an entire battalion's turnover was killed throughout the war, those who were engaged in the beginning might have been killed at twice the rate of those who enrolled later. Pure guessing on my part, but if we take the sample that I cited, with 8,300 serving throughout the war, we might assume that the original draft that arrived in France in 1914 was only about 800 or so. And, of those 800, I would reckon that at least 250 - and perhaps 300 - would have been killed, the great majority of them in the first five months. Phil (PJA) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike n Posted 10 November , 2011 Author Share Posted 10 November , 2011 The quote was from the 5th div history I will try and dig out where / what the quote was in relation to, I was really asking I think would be those front line troops where were entitled to the mons clasp as being the original troops, but those who were wounded but able to return to front line units as having survived. Obviously artillary units would be also front line troops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyrim Posted 11 November , 2011 Share Posted 11 November , 2011 Were the medals issued at the end of the war given only to those who survived or were they issued to the next of kin of the fallen as well? The reason I ask is that if they were only issued to survivors their numbers would tell how many made it through and could be compared to the numbers of those sent into the combat zones. For instance, if we knew the number of 1914 Stars issued and compared that to the number of troops sent over in 1914 we would have some indication of the fatality rate for that period. The same method might be helpful to guage 1915. On the other hand wouldn't the number of Victory Medals compared to the total number of troops who went into combat areas do the same? Assuming, of course, that those numbers are known. I know it's a lot more complicated problem than that but it might point in the right direction. tyrim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dycer Posted 11 November , 2011 Share Posted 11 November , 2011 Tyrim, Medals were issued to both the living and the dead. George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muerrisch Posted 11 November , 2011 Share Posted 11 November , 2011 The estimate of 800 men to F&F ab initio is wrong. Every effort was made at mobilisation to achieve battalions of 1000 almost exactly, and this was, in the main, achieved. See Westlake, for example. The Old Contemptibles, the original Other Ranks of 2nd RWF, from the Roll of the 1914 Star. 2nd RWF sailed to Rouen on 10th to 13th August 1914 with very nearly 100% of regular soldiers, or regular reservists, all with regimental numbers between 1022 and 11449. Almost all these men qualified for the 1914 Star and most of them also the additional clasp for being within range of enemy mobile artillery before end 22nd November. (Note that the clasp to the Star had to be applied for and many people did not bother, either on their own behalf or on behalf of a dead soldier). All the dead of 2nd RWF recorded before 31st December 1914 will necessarily be pre-war regulars, Regular Reservists, or Special Reservists, as no newly enlisted men are said to have reached the front line until May 1915 [regimental log book]. Of those 1409 Old Contemptibles of 2nd RWF who qualified for the 1914 Star, a few over 300 lost their lives during the war, 83 in 1914. This is a casualty rate taken over the period of the war among the Old Army men who served in 1914 of about 21%, bad enough in all conscience, but a far cry from the Death of an Army myth. Attrition of the battalion during the war I apologise for the mangling of my tabulation below: apparently outside my control! The causes of death for all Other Ranks as given by SDIGW are as follows: Killed in Action 822 Died of Wounds (includes gassed) 229 Died of Wounds at Home 21 Died at Sea 1 Died 31 Died at Home 12 Missing 3 Not in SDIGW but in CWGC or other listings, cause of death not therefore known 20 TOTAL 1139 Attrition of the battalion by death year 1914 83 1915 137 1916 310 1917 311 1918 284 later 11 (Missing (no death date)) (3) TOTAL 1139 I do not claim that 2nd RWF was typical. There is no such animal. But these indisputable facts go some way to dispelling hand-waving waffle and guesswork. Things were bad enough without need for exageration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moggs Posted 11 November , 2011 Share Posted 11 November , 2011 From an Australian perspective, the 14th Battalion. Out of the 1100 or so original members on the nominal roll (understanding that a small percentage of these did not see action for a variety of reasons) around 70 of them were still there at the end of the war. My records of A company state that there were 262 originals of which 67 were KIA and less than 20 were still there at the end of the war, the rest were POW, wounded or recovering at home. Jonathan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tipperary Posted 11 November , 2011 Share Posted 11 November , 2011 On reading the post i had a look at the only ref i have which is for 1st Irish Guards the casualty,s dead from all causes by end december 1914 was 18 officers and 330 or's.I cant make out the starting compliment of or's but officers were 34 on landing in august.The total dead of both battalions by end of war was 2349 with 115 of those officers and 5739 wounded.Given that the or strenth was give or take a thousand men on landing about one third never made it past the first 4 months.In the case of the original officers 50% lost their lives in that period.God rest them.john Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phil andrade Posted 11 November , 2011 Share Posted 11 November , 2011 Of those 1409 Old Contemptibles of 2nd RWF who qualified for the 1914 Star, a few over 300 lost their lives during the war, 83 in 1914. This is a casualty rate taken over the period of the war among the Old Army men who served in 1914 of about 21%, bad enough in all conscience, but a far cry from the ‘Death of an Army’ myth. Excellent rendition, thanks. For some reason, I had always associated the 800 figure to be broadly representative of the combat strength of the battalions....I also saw it as equating to roughly one tenth of the 8,300 plus of the sample that I had cited, and thought that it might make rough and ready arithmetical comparison a bit easier. In candour, I'm surprised that the 1914 death rate for 2nd RWF was not a good deal higher. I wonder what that figure of 83 deaths might imply in terms of overall casualties. If I might be excused a little" hand waving waffle and guesswork", ....175 to 200 wounded and 50 or more PoWs .....perhaps 300- 350 casualties in all. Not too bad from a total of 1,409 deployed, especially given the intensity of First Ypres. Phil (PJA) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phil andrade Posted 11 November , 2011 Share Posted 11 November , 2011 Given that the or strenth was give or take a thousand men on landing about one third never made it past the first 4 months.In the case of the original officers 50% lost their lives in that period.God rest them.john Thank you, John....that conforms to the guesswork in my first post, and rather takes the sting out of Grumpy's retort. I feel a little less chastened now ! Phil (PJA) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike n Posted 11 November , 2011 Author Share Posted 11 November , 2011 In 5th div during part of august 1918 to September 1918,during the big push they had casualty rate of 6000 odd which for sake of discussion is a 50% rate obviously many would have made full recovery in due course. Battalions were amalgamated due to severe losses and the number of battalions were reduced Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muerrisch Posted 12 November , 2011 Share Posted 12 November , 2011 Excellent rendition, thanks. For some reason, I had always associated the 800 figure to be broadly representative of the combat strength of the battalions....I also saw it as equating to roughly one tenth of the 8,300 plus of the sample that I had cited, and thought that it might make rough and ready arithmetical comparison a bit easier. In candour, I'm surprised that the 1914 death rate for 2nd RWF was not a good deal higher. I wonder what that figure of 83 deaths might imply in terms of overall casualties. If I might be excused a little" hand waving waffle and guesswork", ....175 to 200 wounded and 50 or more PoWs .....perhaps 300- 350 casualties in all. Not too bad from a total of 1,409 deployed, especially given the intensity of First Ypres. Phil (PJA) 2nd battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers did not do POW much, certainly not the Old Contemptibles. I made no claim they were typical, but I have done the number crunching. 1st RWF suffered much more heavily in 1914, but, simply, the analysis of their figures can be left to someone else! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phil andrade Posted 13 November , 2011 Share Posted 13 November , 2011 Interesting comment about the paucity of PoWs from 2RWF, Grumpy, in so far as the Old Contemptibles are concerned. The 1914 men yielded an awful lot of prisoners. One fifth of all the battle casualties suffered by the BEF in France and Flanders in 1914 were taken prisoners. This proportion exceeded even that of 1918, when the ratio was about one in eight. Mind you, that 1918 figure needs to be qualified : if the proportion was assessed for the March-April fighting, then the figure might exceed that of 1914. It would be interesting to see how the two Great Retreats compared in this respect. The 1914 contingent was depleted by capture almost as much as it was by death. It seems that the 2RWF was rather untypical : perhaps it escaped the most intense fighting that year. For the other years on the Western Front, the proportion of British PoWs among the total caualties was astonishingly small : fewer than three per cent, in aggregate, for 1915-16-17. Phil (PJA) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Black Posted 9 July , 2013 Share Posted 9 July , 2013 While reading Wauchope's bible of the Black Watch, there is mention made of which men of the 2nd Battalion who were still serving at the time of the armistice who were in the battalion on the 4th of August 1914. There were 52 names, 6 officers and the rest NCO's & other ranks. In the preface to each of the three books he states that 30,000 men served in the regular, territorial and service battalions of the regiment during the war, of these 8,000 died and over 20.000 were injured. So that leaves approximately 2,000 men who served at some time in the regiment who were physically unscathed.....Not a lot then, less than 7%. It seems a very high casualty figure. Derek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ss002d6252 Posted 9 July , 2013 Share Posted 9 July , 2013 So that leaves approximately 2,000 men who served at some time in the regiment who were physically unscathed. Does that wounded figure not cover the total number of wounds rather than number of men who were wounded ? Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Black Posted 9 July , 2013 Share Posted 9 July , 2013 The way it is written it seems like he means number of men. Would the number of individual wounds have been collated? Here's the direct quote for you to make up your own mind. This is the opening sentence of the preface, which is in each of the three volumes on the regiment in WW1. "This record of the Black Watch during the Great War shows how some thirty thousand men served in the Regiment in France, Belgium and Salonica, in Palestine and Mesopotamia, of whome eight thousand were killed and over twenty thousand were wounded." Cheers, Derek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ss002d6252 Posted 9 July , 2013 Share Posted 9 July , 2013 The way it is written it seems like he means number of men. Would the number of individual wounds have been collated? On the face of it it certainly reads as number of men but it would very high if that was the case. The official book of statistics issued after the war included a figure for the total number of wounds recorded during the war so the there was a figure but whether this is available as a regimental basis I don't know - the total number recorded for officers and men (British Army only) is given as 1,662,625 wounds (0.3 per man or so on average across the British army but no doubt higher if you take out men who weren't at the front), although I believe this is wounds that required treatment rather than a quick patch up for the MO. If it was cumulative wounds and the 20000 wounded included the 8000 dead then it leaves 12000 wounds for 22000 men which is about 0.5 per man so probably about the right ball park but this is just surmising on my part. Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
healdav Posted 9 July , 2013 Share Posted 9 July , 2013 It is perhaps surprising that no one has done a PhD on this. In principle, it can't be that difficult. There is, presumably a list of those in the am yion 1914, and there are lists of those who survived. Compare the two. What would be really interesting is to see how the life span of those who survived com[ared with that of the population at large. Just hink of the ages of Harry Patch, etc. Was this survival of the fittest in operation in tooth and claw? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bill24chev Posted 9 July , 2013 Share Posted 9 July , 2013 Battalion records/histories that give a figure for Officers and Soldiers still with a battalion from start to finish will not meet completely meet the original question "how many front line soldiers survived from August 1914 to 11 November1918. A number of Or's for example will have been commissioned and served with other Regiments or battalions and many will have survived the war. Also wounded soldiers returning to the F& F may have been drafted to other battalions and even different regiments and although due to wounds may not have been in front line units throughout the war would have served in such units in August 1914 and November 1918. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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