What Were The Actual Odds Of Dying In WW1?

[Matlock1418]

For those of you who are better at maths than me - you may wish to discuss!   

If you haven't already  ;-)

https://www.forces.net/heritage/history/what-were-actual-odds-dying-ww1?utm_source=Forces+Network+Newsletter&utm_campaign=37c5af8bd6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_02_04_05_34&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_25712c5f6f-37c5af8bd6-441250679

Edited 4 February , 2020 by Matlock1418

[Coldstreamer]

too many variables for this question. Army Navy etc ? Private, Officer? which side you are on...

[Matlock1418]

 

3 minutes ago, Coldstreamer said:

too many variables for this question. Army Navy etc ? Private, Officer? which side you are on...

= Discussion of the article - I thought it was all over the place

Take your choice.

Edited 4 February , 2020 by Matlock1418

[Derek Black]

The article is interesting, it references an ex forumite who did much work on casualty stats here.

Edited 5 February , 2020 by Derek Black

[regimentalrogue]

The following stats are from an analysis of the Part II Orders of The Royal Canadian Regiment (The RCR), which entered the theatre of war on 1 Nov 1915.

 

Approximately 4700 officers, NCOs, and soldiers served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force with The RCR during the First World War. According to the Part II Orders:

• 1432 were evacuated to England wounded.
• 538 were evacuated to England sick.
• 443 were reported Killed in Action.
• 165 were reported Died of Wounds before being transferred out of the unit.

In total, 818 Royal Canadians (approximately 17.4%) are recorded as fatal casualties of the War (CWGC listed), another 39 who served in the field with the Regiment are identified as belonging to other units at the time of their deaths.

 

Some soldiers were evacuated (sick/wounded) more than once, or were evacuated at one time and after returning to the front were later KIA or DOW. After accounting for duplication in casualty reporting, approximately 51% of those who served in The RCR during the First World War were reported as casualties (sick, wounded or died) at least once.

[Coldstreamer]

22 hours ago, Matlock1418 said:

 

= Discussion of the article - I thought it was all over the place

Take your choice.

 

It was rather tough going to read the article

Edited 5 February , 2020 by Coldstreamer

[phil andrade]

It makes the head spin, trying to assimilate all those statistics.

 

When Haig became C-i-C of the BEF at the end of 1915, he recorded his view that the loss of one tenth of the nation’s manhood wold be a price worth paying for the defeat of Prussian militarism. It was to prove an uncannily accurate surmise.

 

The nation’s male population of military age was decimated , literally : roughly ten per cent perished in the war.

 

And that was for all those men of the age groups that were suited to military service ; but, of course, not all of them served in the armed forces.

 

Exemptions due to reserved occupations or illness etc meant that the death rate for men who actually served was well in excess of ten per cent, and of those who went to France and Flanders it was roughly thirteen per cent, and it was to be more like twenty five per cent for the men who served in the infantry there.  And that was just for the fatal casualties. The  surviving wounded, gassed and prisoners outnumbered the dead by nearly three to one. The implications are staggering.

 

That’s my attempt to summarise and simplify a labyrinth of statistical data.

 

One thing agitates me about the comparison with the Crimean War that was cited.  Gordon Corrigan (?)  stated that the death rate in the British force that was sent to the Crimea was higher than that for the British Army in the Great War.  I daresay the same could be said of the Napoleonic Wars. It was the lethal squalour that accounted for that.  If we’re talking about killed - i.e. deaths from enemy action - the Great War was deadlier by far.

 

It’s awful to contemplate that the French and German death rates 1914-18 were so much higher than those of the British.

 

Editing : Getting second thoughts here : that allusion I made to twenty five per cent of the British infantrymen being killed might be a sort of rhetorical exaggeration ....although I’m sure I saw such a figure in the text of that article.  Perhaps it applied to the most extreme cases.  If I said about one in five I might be nearer the mark for an overall ratio of fatalities among the infantry on the Western Front.

 

Phil

 

Edited 6 February , 2020 by phil andrade

[Keith_history_buff]

I have come across mention of the 89% who did not die
https://ppaanderson.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/the-cult-of-the-fwws-11/

[phil andrade]

The point is well made in that link, and it stands reiteration : the great majority of men who served lived to tell the tale.

 

There is another fact that deserves emphasis : all British military personnel killed in battle, in all the other wars of modern history, from the sixteenth century , including the Second World War, combined, do not approach, by a long margin, the total who were killed in the Great War.

 

Phil