BEF 1914 - Early Disembarkation and Survivability

[Guest]

What proportion of infantrymen who landed in Aug 1914 would become fatalities or non-fatal casualties?

 

I would be interested in your thoughts. For the Army in the war, fatalities were between 11-12%. I would have guessed double that number for a unit disembarking in Aug 1914 as the infantry took a higher proportion of the casualties, 1914 was very hard and men who landed in Aug 1914 saw a lot more action than most.......

 

Background. Some time ago a fellow GWF member asked how likely it was to survive the war unscathed. There were some interesting suggestions and equally interesting examples. It was inconclusive as it was agreed that tracing men transferred out made it intractable. The original question obviously needs to be anchored on units that started in August 1914 - the old Expeditionary Force (later BEF).

 

I wondered if it was possible to try and follow the fates of men in a single battalion that landed in August 1914. Given the recent releases of medal roll data it has been possible to reconstruct 1914 Star medal rolls more quickly. I thought it would be interesting to look at the Royal Sussex Regiment for a number of reasons; the West Sussex Records Office has a ledger recording the fate of the men, the regiment only had one regular battalion in France and Flanders, making it easy to trace them, and it doesn't have a published history, so there was an opportunity to fill a gap. I started with the 1914 medal roll, which produced some simply alarming stats.

 

The 2nd Battalion disembarked on 12-13th August 1914 with 1,019 all ranks, followed by a few odds and sods, then the 1st, 2nd , 3rd 4th and 5th reinforcements. Of the 1,000 odd men who disembarked on 12th-13th Aug 1914, one-in-three men would become a fatality. That surprised me. A lot. Given fatalities for the Army during the whole war were around 11-12%, this seems to be a very high figure. The infantry would of course bear a higher percentage of fatalities and we know that 1914 was fairly lethal, but this still seems to be a very high number.

49.7% of all this cohort's fatalities happened in 1914 - within 20 weeks of landing. The average time from disembarkation to death is shown below;

 

Fate......................................Number....................Ave time from disembarkation..........% of Total Disembarked (1,019)

Died..........................................54................................221 days (31 weeks)..............................5.3%

Died of Wounds........................56................................299 days (43 weeks)..............................5.5%

Killed in Action........................224................................259 days (37 weeks).............................22.0%

Sub Total: Fatalities...............334................................260 days (37 weeks)..............................32.8%

 

The subsequent reinforcement drafts did not fare any better;The fate of the subsequent drafts who qualified for the 1914 Star are shown below:

Fate....................................Number..........% Fatalities

Main body...........................1,019...................32.8%

1st Reinforcements................94......................36.2%

2nd Reinforcements...............94......................25.5%

3rd Reinforcements...............94......................38.3%

4th Reinforcements............158......................28.5%

5th Reinforcements..............99......................34.3%

6th Reinforcements..............93......................32.2% - this draft disembarked on 10th-12th Nov 1914.

 

 

Note: Only identifiable drafts of men within tight dates are included. In addition to these are 68 men who disembarked across a number of dates.

 

I am wading through the 1914 part of the 1914-15 Star data. I am about 70% of the way through and initial calcs are even more alarming. Two large drafts in late November appear to have a fatality ratio of 46.9% which is quite breathtaking. I will refine this data in a few days.

 

My sense is that the 2nd Bn Royal Sussex Regiment was not particularly hard hit when compared to other battalions of the first five divisions (2 RSR was in 2nd Bde, 1 Div). I thought it was interesting. One has to be careful with extracting too many conclusions from data, but my sense is that survivability was much lower that I would have guessed. If one assumes a 1:3 Killed: Wounded ratio one can easily see how very few men may have made it through more than 4 years of hardship unscathed.

I have more medal rolls and will analyse these too. MG

Edited 24 September , 2016 by Guest

[johnboy]

Only my thought, As the war went on men were more used to trench warfare. In the early days of attacking strongholds en masse fatalities would be high. Would the shortage of ammo been a factor?

[charlesmessenger]

Martin

Most interesting. It would seem that the old British Army really did die at Ypres.

Charles M

[Ron Clifton]

Only my thought, As the war went on men were more used to trench warfare. In the early days of attacking strongholds en masse fatalities would be high. Would the shortage of ammo been a factor?

I don't think that either side had many "strongholds" in 1914.

As far as I know, any ammo shortage in 1914 would be in artillery shells rather than rifle or machine gun bullets. But this is pure guesswork on my part.

Ron

[battiscombe]

very interesting research and figures, and well worth replicating with other infantry units. As you say the ready availability of the Star rolls now makes this a much easier research proposition. And work that would only need to be done once to provide some definitive results. Thanks for sharing that.

A quick look at 1/KRRC looks like at least 30% fatalities

[Derek Black]

I'm currently going through the 1st Btn Black Watch 1914 star roll and doing much the same thing Martin.

I'm following up the transferred men and checking everyone listed on the roll against CWGC, as some were killed but not marked as such on the rolls.

So far out of the first 600-700 men there's a a fatality rate of 40%.

Derek.

[westkent78]

Very interesting Martin. I'll have to get cracking on 1st RWK. I've been doing something similar for the 1/23rd London 'originals' from 14th March 1915 over the last few years and these medal rolls being online are going to be a godsend for completing work like this and finding all those 'odd' men who transferred out. For 1/23rd I'm at the frankly astonishing 50% fatality rate for the 'originals' but there are plenty of transferees and term of enlistment men to track down and I'm expecting it to drop closer to 35%.

I'm surprised too that your numbers are so high. I was thinking along the lines of 20-25% fatalities for 1st RWK. We'll see. The impression I have gathered over the years is that many of the 'Old Contemptibles' in RWK were invalided out through wounds, usually one wound suffered in 1914 or early 1915 was enough, ailments or their terms of enlistment were up. Combined with a healthy smattering of POWs and a large number of transferees I'm going to be surprised if more than a few % made it to the end of the war with 1st Bn.

Keep up the good work. Always enjoy what you've been posting.

Matthew

[phil andrade]

Many years ago - in the 1960s, actually - I read a book by Tim Carew about the 1914 battles. I think it was called THE DEATH OF AN ARMY.

In the concluding chapter, it was stated that one third of all the men who disembarked " lay under the soil of France" by year's end. Apart from thinking that most of these probably lay under the soil of Belgium - not France - I had always assumed that this was rhetorical exaggeration.

Now I confess to being shocked to learn that Carew might have been right.

Had I been asked to guess, I would have reckoned that one fifth would have been dead, and that these, taken in conjunction with wounds, illness and German captivity, would have removed between two thirds and three quarters of the original contingent.

One observation, Martin : the first tabulation shows an abnormally high proportion of " died" as opposed to killed in action or died from wounds. Such a high ratio of non battle deaths suggests the men were either susceptible to illness or were accident prone to a remarkable degree.

In this sample, about sixteen per cent of the fatalites are in this non battle category ; according to the Medical Stats, the overall figure for F&F was fewer than five per cent for the entire war, and that allows for deaths in the Spanish Flu.

Edit : From Medical Services, Casualties and Medical Statistics, table 4, page 122, total non battle fatalities, France and Flanders, 1914, were 372 died of disease and 136 died of injury : a total fo 508....this compared with 23,262 killed, died of wounds or missing presumed dead. Set against that, the 54 non battle deaths of that single battalion is freakishly high. Memory failed to serve me : the book by Tim Carew was VANISHED ARMY, and was published in 1971.

Editing again, apologies, Martin, I now see that this tabulation extends well beyond the end of 1914. I'm too prone to rushing in....all the same, my observation about the abnormal ratio of non battle deaths has some merit, I hope.

Phil (PJA)

[Guest]

Thanks for the comments. It would be interesting to see analysis of other battalions from the 1914 and 1914-15 Star medal rolls.

The approach I have taken is simply to transcribe the data into a spreadsheet so I can manipulate it (In a good way). The 1914 Star medal roll was 1,719 men. The 1914-15 Star is 8,111 men, so rather a larger task. I split the data into the known categories of casualties (as above), as well as men transferred out, discharged (lots under KR Para 392 xvi and xxi). The xvi men are I think a reasonable proxy for those medically discharged as a result of wounds, sickness and injury. It will be interesting to see how this part of the data compares across units. The transfers out are interesting as many are to Home Service Garrison Battalions, which might indicate men who have been medically downgraded but still deemed fit for home service.

Clearly we will get a better picture the more battalions we have, so any contributions would be very gratefully received. Due to the kindness of others I have the East Surrey Regiment 1914 Star and the RWF 1914 and 1914-15 Star data. It would be interesting to see the hard numbers of other battalions. MG

[ss002d6252]

Edited to update figures - 19/11/14

6th DLI - 1914/15 star (Still a work in progress but I don't anticipate any major changes).

Originals from 19/20 April 1915 (where possible I have noted deaths and discharges even if men transferred)

949 known men of the 1000 or so originals*
212 discharged (pre end of war) 22.3%
187 dead 19.7%

Currently known discharge reason for the discharged men:

73 men of which

6 sick 8.2%

13 unfit (no reason given) 17.8%

37 wounded 50.7%

1 Sick & wounded 1.4%

16 Time exp. 21.9%

Average life expectancy 396 days

80 men died within 20 weeks of landing 8.4% of the originals - (42.8% of those originals who died during the war).

1st Draft of 26 June 1915**

193 known men
31 discharged (pre end of war) 16.1%

of which

5 sick 16.1%

18 unfit (no reason given) 58%

5 Wounded 16.1%

3 Time exp. 9.7%

40 dead 21%

2nd Draft of 20 August 1915***

70 known men
11 discharged (pre end of war) 15.7%
18 dead 26%

* These men had been through 2nd Ypres which caused heavy losses.

** These men were posted to an entrenching battalion for several months before being sent to the front.

*** The majority of these men were sent straight to the front within 3 days of landing.

Craig

Edited 19 November , 2014 by ss002d6252

[phil andrade]

Judging by your battalion sample, Martin, roughly one half of the fatalities suffered by the one thousand who disembarked 12-13 August 1914 perished by the end of 1914.

Using that as a criterion for extrapolation, we have a ballpark figure of one man in every six killed or died in the first twenty weeks : taking into account wounded, POWs and invalided out sick, the eradication of two thirds of the original complement by the end of 1914 seems a statistical certainty, and a rather conservative guess at that.

Phil (PJA)

[Guest]

6th DLI - 1914/15 star (Still a work in progress but I don't anticipate any major changes).

Originals from 19/20 April 1915 (where possible I have noted deaths and discharges even if men transferred)

949 known men of the 1000 or so originals*

308 discharged 32.5%

187 dead 19.7%

Average life expectancy 396 days

1st Draft of 26 June 1915**

193 known men

55 discharged 28%

40 dead 21%

2nd Draft of 20 August 1915**

70 known men

18 discharged 26%

18 dead 26%

* These men had been through 2nd Ypres which caused heavy losses.

** These men were posted to an entrenching battalion for several months before being sent to the front.

*** The majority of these men were sent straight to the front within 3 days of landing.

Craig

Thanks Craig. Very useful. Do you by any chance have the breakdown of discharged by KR? i.e KR Para 392 xvi and xxi? etc.? Also I would be interested to know what proportion of the 'original' died within 20 weeks if you have the data. MG

[ss002d6252]

Thanks Craig. Very useful. Do you by any chance have the breakdown of discharged by KR? i.e KR Para 392 xvi and xxi? etc.? Also I would be interested to know what proportion of the 'original' died within 20 weeks if you have the data. MG

I don't have the KR data broken down but I can update my earlier post with the proportion who died within 20 weeks - I'll do some number crunching and add it later.

Craig

[phil andrade]

Bearing in mind that there were just under 24,000 deaths from all causes in F&F 1914, and that something in the order of ninety thousand BEF troops disembarked in the first contingents in August, it's rather hard to accept that more than one fifth of that cohort died by the end of 1914 , because it would leave too few deaths to account for the losses among the following arrivals.

Phil (PJA)

[Guest]

1st Bn East Surrey Regt 1914 Star:

1,742 All Ranks qualified for the 1914 Star.

Fate......................................Number....................% of Total Disembarked (1,742)

Died..........................................21..............................1.2%

Died of Wounds.......................79..............................4.5%

Killed in Action........................290.............................16.6% ...............

Sub Total: Fatalities...............390.............................22.3%

Note CWGC data indicate 190 or two-thirds of these casualties happened in 1914. The average time from disembarkation to death was 311 days (45 weeks) In addition to the above:

Silver War Badge..................307

Discharged...........................123

Transferred..........................460

Main Body: 1,100 All Ranks disembarked 13th-16th Aug 1914:

Fate......................................Number....................% of Total Disembarked (1,019)

Died..........................................17..............................1.5%

Died of Wounds........................50..............................4.5%

Killed in Action........................181.............................16.5%

Sub Total: Fatalities...............248.............................22.5%

The subsequent reinforcement drafts were slightly more fragmented than the 2nd Bn Royal Sussex Regt. The fate of the subsequent drafts are shown below:

Fate....................................Number..........% Fatalities

Main body...........................1,019...................22.5%

1st Reinforcements................74......................18.1%

2nd Reinforcements...............79......................11.4%

3rd Reinforcements..............159......................24.5%

4th Reinforcements..............93.......................29.0%

5th Reinforcements..............27.......................29.6 %

6th Reinforcements..............38....................... 23.7%

7th Reinforcements..............76....................... 34.2%

8th Reinforcements..............38....................... 18.4%

Database very kindly provided by GWF member Bootneck. MG

[ss002d6252]

Thanks Craig. Very useful. Do you by any chance have the breakdown of discharged by KR? i.e KR Para 392 xvi and xxi? etc.? Also I would be interested to know what proportion of the 'original' died within 20 weeks if you have the data. MG

My earlier post now updated.

Craig

[phil andrade]

Thanks, Martin.

Phil (PJA)

[Guest]

My earlier post now updated.

Craig

Thanks

What appears to be unfolding is the fact that a very large proportion of the fatalities occur within 20 weeks of disembarking. This skew towards the front end should of course be expected - assuming one believes the longer one spends in the line the greater the likelihood of becoming a fatality. I have been surprised by just how skewed the data is.

Preliminary number crunching of the 2nd Bn RWF data indicates 24.7% of the men who qualified for the 1914 Star became fatalities - the same order of magnitude as the 1st Bn East Surrey Regt and in line with my initial assumptions. It may transpire that the 2nd Bn Royal Sussex did have a particularly hard 1914. We shall see.

Either way the infantrymen who disembarked in Aug 1914 appear to have been at least twice as likely to become a fatality compared to the average soldier in the Great War.

[Guest]

On page 253 of the actual book and on page (267 of 902) of the PDF version, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire in the Great War , there is a table of BEF casualties by the week that might be of use. There may be other useful stats?

Mike

[phil andrade]

Mike,

Always a first class source, SMEBE....the only qualification in this case being that so many of the 1914 deaths were subsumed by the category of " Missing".

About thirty per cent of the missing in action from the 1914 fighting were subsequently counted among the dead, but in the table posted above they remain in the missing.

Phil (PJA)

[Guest]

Bearing in mind that there were just under 24,000 deaths from all causes in F&F 1914, and that something in the order of ninety thousand BEF troops disembarked in the first contingents in August, it's rather hard to accept that more than one fifth of that cohort died by the end of 1914 , because it would leave too few deaths to account for the losses among the following arrivals.

Phil (PJA)

A good point.. I have included the fatalities in 1914 simply to illustrate just how skewed the data is. In the case of the 2nd Bn Royal Sussex, although 50% of the fatalities happened in 1914, it still 'only' represents less than 10% of all the battalion's men who disembarked before 22nd Nov 1914.

Arithmetic of the Frontier. When analysing cohorts we need to recognise the inherent arithmetic of a diminishing base. If we took 1,000 men and they saw 10% permanent casualties every year, after the first year there would be 900 men left. After the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year there would only be 810, 729, and 656 men left in these respective years. In this theoretical example, 100 of the 344 permanent casualties of this cohort happened in the first year. This represents 29%. So, in a theoretical war where casualties occurred at the same ratio over a number of years, the laws of arithmetic play apart when analysing cohorts. Put Simply, over the great war, if (and it is a big IF) casualties were spread evenly across the years, we should expect an August 1914 cohort's fatalities to show a skew towards the first year.

Edit. The second mathematical dynamic is the assumed fatality ratio. Using a range of annual fatalities from 10% to as high as 40% we still see a heavy skew towards the first 12 months of between 29% and 46%.

Edit 2: Put another way, ask the question: what annual fatality ratio (over 4 years) would generate the 334 casualties* from a Cohort of 1000 men? The answer is an annual fatality rate of only 9.5% In this scenario the first twelve months would still represent 28.8% of all fatalities. We can use this as a theoretical benchmark.

* equivalent to that of the Main Body of the 2nd Bn Royal Sussex Regiment

In the case of the R Sussex Regiment we see that nearly 50% of the fatalities happened in the first 20 weeks and 59% of this cohort's fatalities happened in the first year. This illustrates the extent of the enormous skew towards the first year - and particularly skewed towards the first 20 weeks.

For the 1st Bn East Surrey Regt 179 of the main Body's 248 fatalities occurred within 12 months of disembarkation - some 72%. I find this a simply astonishing number. I have no idea what this means and I think it would be imprudent to draw any conclusions from this at this stage with such small data samples, but this does look interesting.

The OP is about the likelihood of an infantryman landing in Aug 1914 becoming a fatality during the whole war. Lots to think about. MG

Edited. Twice. Three times.

Mike,

Always a first class source, SMEBE....the only qualification in this case being that so many of the 1914 deaths were subsumed by the category of " Missing".

About thirty per cent of the missing in action from the 1914 fighting were subsequently counted among the dead, but in the table posted above they remain in the missing.

Phil (PJA)

There is a simple adjustment. Take CWGC data and subtract the fatalities in the table. The difference will be the Missing who were MIA and KIA or MIA and DOW. What is left is the POWs.

[phil andrade]

Martin,

Your comment in the OP " ...and we know that 1914 was fairly lethal " is admirable in its restraint.

I guess that the French would have something to add here.

Three hundred thousand French fatalities in the first 150 days - the majority of them dying in less than six weeks between August 20th and the end of September 1914 - speak volumes about how outrageous and skewed the fatality rates were for certain periods of extreme intensity ; if the British experience was only one tenth that of the French in terms of absolute numbers, the same intensity afflicted the BEF in its opening campaigns...although in the British case I suppose it was the mid October to earlier November fighting that made the most havoc.

Phil (PJA)

[Guest]

The British Newspaper Archive-Dundee Courier - Saturday 03 November 1928

From a report on the unveiling of the La Ferte sous Jouarre Memorial

" Between Friday, 7th August, and Sunday, 16th August, 1914, the original British Expeditionary Force, composed of General Headquarters, one cavalry division (with an extra brigade), four infantry divisions and lines of communication troops-about 85,000 officers and men-left our shores for France. By Thursday, 20th August, it was concentrated between Maubeuge and Le Cateau, and two days later the 4th Dragoon Guards fired the first shots, our troops being then in position behind the Mons Canal. During the four weeks that followed the force was engaged in a continuous "war of movement" in which the battle line changed each day. The period was in many respects the gravest of the whole war. In those four brief weeks, thanks in no small measure to gallantry of the British troops, fighting stubbornly side by side with their French comrades, the elaborate and carefully considered German plan for ending the war at one blow was foiled and the final issue was deferred. The engagements included the Battle and Retreat from Mons, and the Battles of Le Cateau, the Marne, and the Aisne. The casualties of this "little band of brothers" in August 1914 numbered 14,409, of which 1382 were recorded as dead and 9765 as missing or prisoners, and in September they were 15,189, of which 2717 were recorded as dead and 3171 as missing or prisoners. On 20th September in the " Actions of the Aisne Heights " German attacks were repelled at a cost of 2000 British casualties and it then became clear that the danger of a break through on the Aisne had passed. Several considerations suggested the transfer of the British troops from that area to Flnders, and this was effected during the first fortnight of October. Precise figures of the casualties incurred in that movement are not available, but they were few. It may be assumed that the total dead for the period covered by this brief survey was 7700. Of that number, 3838 have no known graves and have perforce to be placed under the category of the "missing." Their names have been inscribed upon the memorial at La Ferte sous Jouarre.

Mike

[phil andrade]

Thanks, Mike...brilliant contribution, reflecting not only the awful impact in terms of numbers, but also the way people still felt about those early days of battle, ten years after the war, despite the monstrously greater British death roll in battles over the following years.

Phil (PJA)

[Guest]

Further to your post 22

" No one can question the magnificent fight put up at the Marne by our Old Contemptibles. The original BEF, composed of our Aldershot Regular Army, was the best trained fighting force, in many respects in the field in 1914. It fought stoutly, dourly, and heroically, but the prevalent notion in this country that it was a decisive factor at the Marne needs re-adjustment, observes a "Newcastle Journal" correspondent. At that battle there were 74 divisions engaged against the Germans, and of these, only four, however good, were British. Our front was a comparatively insignificant sector, and the Frecnh have displayed admirable restraint under the provocation of our military braggadocio about the Marne. Our total casualties to all ranks in the battle were 17,000. The French lost over 22,000 officers alone and their total casualties amounted to over 300,000. "

British Newspaper Archive-Hartlepool Mail - Monday 13 August 1934

Mike