Survivability of Wounds

[johnboy]

Probably the majority were fatalities.

[phil andrade]

Those early battles did, I imagine, allow a greater opportunity for use of the bayonet than the more industrialised fighting that cam later.

Even so, I would be astonished if the cold steel accounted for one in twenty of battlefield victims.

Significantly, the meticulously complied data in the German sanitatsbericht do indicate that a higher percentage of bayonet wounds were suffered in warfare in the East than in the West.

The Russo - Japanese conflict a decade earlier had entailed a greater use of the bayonet than occurred in France and Flanders ; I believe that the fighting at Gallipoli likewise put soldiers into more frequent man to man contact.

Phil (PJA)

[Doc2]

Five per cent of all wounds ?

That's a bit of a stretch, surely ?

There might have been episodes which entailed unusually intense bayonet fighting. IIRC, Hastings describes one such in the ealry days of the war, in which Frenchmen were surprised at night, and large numbers bayoneted before they were properly awake.

All the same, that's such a vastly increased ratio from what we normally read about that my suspicions are aroused.

Phil (PJA)

Maybe a stretch, but the information is from a guy whose job for 6 months was to investigate Allied medical care systems, and he says the 5% number came from a very senior French Doctor at the administrative level (not someone whose experience was limited to a single battle or hospital). Note that this is only covering the very earliest part of the war. His book was published in mid-1915. I find it very intriguing.....

[phil andrade]

Yes, it would be outrageously cocky of me to challenge the authority of one who was there : but it implies a figure in the tens of thousands for the first couple of months...and that's just the wounds ; imagine the additional thousands who died on the spot, in view of the enhanced fatality of bayonet combat, which we take as a justifiable assumption.

Typos loom large in statistical renditions. Now, if the figure should have read nought point five per cent, instead of five percent, then that would seem plausible ; and would also imply quite a large amount of hand to hand fighting.

Phil (PJA)

[Doc2]

I think we tend to under-estimate the differences between the early phases of the war and later phases. These differences may invalidate the attempt to use total war statistics to examine shorter periods. The bayonet was much more important in the first 6 months of the war, and I have no real problem with the 5% figure (though I admit I haven't really tried to verify it).

A quote from "Surgical lessons from the Great War", by Allen G. Rice (1920, I think), addresses this issue (though obviously not the specific question of how often did bayonets cause wounding).

He states:

"With the definite check of the German advance,

however, and the resultant dead-lock from

Switzerland to the sea, the character of warfare

was vastly changed. Open fighting, swift

maneuvering, and frequent change of positions

gave way to the fixed routine of immobile trench

conflict. The rifle and bayonet gave way to artillery

and bombs ; the free open life in the field

was bartered away for a cramped and crowded

existence in and under the earth. The whole

scheme of warfare had to be radically changed

to meet unforeseen conditions ; every military

department had to be reorganized and to a large

extent re-equipped with new devices to cope

with unsuspected difficulties. Many well tried

methods that had withstood the test of previous

wars proved to be utterly worthless and had to

be ruthlessly scrapped."

This implies clearly that it was possible for bayonet wounds in the early part of the war to be much more important than later in the war. -- Again, unless we can come up with some date-specific statistics, I can't argue against the 5% number for the first six months.

[Frank_East]

Talking about the effect of bayonet wounds,wasn't the Geneva Convention amended to include the banning of certain bayonet types which,it was stated, could inflict unnecessary suffering.

My father in law had a pair of vicious looking bayonets which I thought were late 19th century.The blade length was about 18 inches and had the appearance of a heavy sword.I would have thought this pair would have come into the banned category.

Contrast that with the "pig sticker" of about less than 9 inches in length that was part of our gear many years ago.

[Stoppage Drill]

None of the conventions has ever "prohibited" any edged or thrusting weapon.

A belief grew up that the German Pioneer bayonet was banned, but that is as far as it has ever gone.

[regimentalrogue]

I've posted on my blog the text from the Report of the Ministry; Overseas Military Forces of Canada; 1918 in which the CAMC section describes the passage from wounding to hospital:

Stages of the Wounded from the Battlefield to "Blighty."

With regard to the bayonet, the weapon has always has a huge psychological reputation, but the opportunities to stick one in an enemy soldier simply were not everyday occurrences for the average soldier (even in the infantry). In comparison, there were many more days when a man had the opportunity to be killed by shellfire, never having seen an enemy soldier.

Anyone who has taken training in basic bayonet fighting knows how difficult it is to get a clean thrust at someone equally intent on parrying that thrust. It makes me wonder how many bayonet wounds involved a recipient who was unable, from previous wounding or other causes, to resist in a man-to-man "duel." We're also very accustomed to seeing the images, still and video, of soldiers screaming bloody murder as they thrust a bayonet into a training target, which is often a tethered sandbag staffed with straw: an immobile, "soft" target with a single layer of loose woven cloth covering. Now imagine replacing that sandbag with a target that doesn't want to be skewered, who may be wearing three or four heavy wool layers of protection in the target area for a waist-level thrust (shirt, pants, tunic, greatcoat) plus the possibility of webbing straps/belts or other impedimenta. Give that enemy his own rifle and bayonet, and will to live, and the romanticized version of heroic Tommy cleanly pitchforking the evil Hun out of the trench gets very confused. I suspect the low overall numbers reported for bayonet wounds are probably fairly accurate, it just wasn't a very efficient weapon for most soldiers and was likely the one used when you literally ran out of time or ammo for reloading, or rage or exhaustion limited one's ability to cognitively develop alternatives in limited time.

It was posted above, but I'll add this link again: A la bayonet, or, "hot blood and cold steel"

[phil andrade]

Has/was there ever been a study of gunshot wounds based on a % analysis of survivability?, to try and make that a little clearer, was for example an arm wound 75% more survivable than a similar leg wound or abdomen to thorax etc as a triage decision. I am not talking about massive traumatic wounds caused by shell fire

thanks

khaki

ps I am also especially interested in the mortality rate for bayonet wounds.

Khaki,

Recently published THE LAST FULL MEASURE How Soldiers Die in Battle, by Michael Stephenson.

I've just started reading it, and it's almost tailor made to deal with your question.

Re: bayonet wounds, the book cites an illuminating statistic from wounds treated in the Place des Invalides, 1763 : more than two thirds from musketry, 13.4 % from artillery, 14.5% from swords ( that surprised me) and 2.4 % from bayonets. Wrong war, of course, but this was the zenith of black powder warfare, with intense massed infantry combat at very close quarters. A century after the Seven Years War, the American experience of 1861-65 yielded a 0.4% incidence of bayonet wounds among about a quarter of a million wound cases that were itemised and recorded. There is commentary about the survivability, and suggestion that artillery was a bigger killer than the wound ratios suggest. Likewise, the point is more lethal than the blade. To be thrust through with a bayonet was more fatal than to be slashed with a sabre.

I've not yet reached his treatment of the Great War.

If the Seven Years War produced 2.4% of recorded wounds being inflicted by bayonets, I would find a notional 5% for the Great War a rather outlandish estimate.

Edited to deal with error in stats.

Phil (PJA)