Killed wounded - national and local figures

[AndrewSid]

Thankyou Alan.  A most interesting study that would be almost impossible te reconstruct today without a few thousand spare hours. 
 

Infantry casualties would have been much higher I’d venture. 

 

wounded six times and topedoed three times stands out…

[phil andrade]

It doesn’t get much better than that.

 

A superb contribution. 

 

Thanks.

 

Phil

 

 

[phil andrade]

A salient feature - if you’ll forgive the pun - of Alan’s tabulation is the high ratio of deaths from disease  : one fifth of all fatalities are attributed to this.  That’s a significantly higher ratio than the U.K. as a whole, which ascribed 88% of all Great War army deaths to killed in action or died from wounds.

 

On the other hand, just over one in ten of the entire Winchester enrolment were killed or mortally wounded in battle, which certainly accords with the overall British experience in the war.

 

 I wonder what the large number of disease deaths might be attributed to.

Theatre of operations  : the Middle East, for example ?  Or a significantly large number of home garrison troops staying in Blighty and succumbing to prevailing illnesses, especially the pandemic of 1918-19 ?

 

Phil

[Alan24]

8 hours ago, phil andrade said:

 I wonder what the large number of disease deaths might be attributed to.

Phil

There were many Winchester men in the 4th Battalion Hampshire Regt who were caught up in the siege at Kut (and wider Mesopotamia actions.). That will be one likely cause.

Some of those same men would have also been included in the number taken prisoner, I assume. How does the prisoner numbers compare to national averages?

Edited 6 December , 2022 by Alan24

[phil andrade]

Roughly similar proportion of POWs to overall deaths from all causes.  The number of prisoners who survived is between one fifth and one fourth of the total number of dead.

 

Kut would certainly bolster up the proportion, but perhaps the city escaped the German onslaught in March April 1918, which yielded a preponderance of British prisoners.

Editing  : rather clumsy language on my part, sorry.  The number of prisoners of war was in the order of 175,000.  Deaths from all causes were c.745,000, hence deaths being more than four tines greater than the number of men who were taken prisoner. I’ve just re written my post to comply.

Phil

Edited 7 December , 2022 by phil andrade

[phil andrade]

On 05/12/2022 at 18:10, Alan24 said:

Gents

I thought you would like to see the results of a much larger sample group covering all ranks and all arms of service.

3454 Citizens of Winchester served in the Great War.

This information was collected in 1921 and published in The Winchester War Service Register the same year.

 

 

The number of missing believed killed is relatively small.  Likewise the number of died from wounds.  There are no fatalities ascribed to gas poisoning: we might have expected a few, given the stringent recording of multiple cases.  The number of killed in action is high, given the number of wound cases . It’s a very robust sample, and rather a challenging one to interpret.  I would be keen to find out how the numbers are allocated to the several years, and especially to the theatres of war. Was there a heavy participation in the Gallipoli battles ?  I associate the Hampshire regiments with some of the fiercest fighting there, and that might account for the high proportion of killed.

 

Phil

[Alan24]

8 hours ago, phil andrade said:

The number of missing believed killed is relatively small.  Likewise the number of died from wounds.  There are no fatalities ascribed to gas poisoning: we might have expected a few, given the stringent recording of multiple cases.  The number of killed in action is high, given the number of wound cases . It’s a very robust sample, and rather a challenging one to interpret.  I would be keen to find out how the numbers are allocated to the several years, and especially to the theatres of war. Was there a heavy participation in the Gallipoli battles ?  I associate the Hampshire regiments with some of the fiercest fighting there, and that might account for the high proportion of killed.

 

Phil

Phil

If you pm me an email I can send you the whole document which gives breif details of each man's service.

[JMB1943]

Phil,

You have to be careful to remember that the 3454 citizens of Winchester were distributed amongst all services (Army, Navy, RNAS/RFC/RAF) and some probably never even left the UK;  they were not solely front-line infantrymen, which is what Andrew and I have been discussing previously with you.

Regards,

JMB

[phil andrade]

37 minutes ago, JMB1943 said:

Phil,

You have to be careful to remember that the 3454 citizens of Winchester were distributed amongst all services (Army, Navy, RNAS/RFC/RAF) and some probably never even left the UK;  they were not solely front-line infantrymen, which is what Andrew and I have been discussing previously with you.

Regards,

JMB

Yes, of course, that is to the fore of my mind.

The great preponderance of the 6.3 million service personnel were in the army: more than 5.4 million,if I’m right.

Whether this applied to Winchester is moot.

Nearly ninety five percent of the 745,000 dead were soldiers.

For the army, the ratios of killed, missing, died of wounds or gas poisoning,died of disease and accidental injury, prisoners, wounded and gassed are meticulously tabulated in the official history of the medical services, casualty statistics, and I have used those as a benchmark for comparison.

 

No reference to the mercantile marine in my citation : nearly fifteen thousand in addition to the 745,000.  With those multiple torpedoing cases, this could well be pertinent.

 

Phil

Edited 7 December , 2022 by phil andrade

[Alan24]

21 hours ago, phil andrade said:

There are no fatalities ascribed to gas poisoning: we might have expected a few, given the stringent recording of multiple cases.

Phil, 

Now that I've sent you the full list, you'll see that the very first man on the roll died on 21 Sept 1918 having been gassed on 20 Sept 1918.

It it therefore the case that death by gas poisoning must be included in the KIA or DOW figures.

Also published is a complete breakdown of awards and honours gained by these 3454 men. I'll post that shortly for the interest of the other posters on this thread.

[Alan24]

48 minutes ago, Alan24 said:

Also published is a complete breakdown of awards and honours gained by these 3454 men. I'll post that shortly for the interest of the other posters on this thread.

 

[phil andrade]

Winchester, being in the vicinity of Southampton, must have had a certain “ maritime “ tradition. 
 

I’m thinking about those multiple torpedo cases.

Any idea what the population of the city was in 1914 ?

About one in seven of the British population donned uniform in the war. If Winchester reflected that proportion, we might expect a number in the vicinity of twenty five thousand.

Again, my reference to the one in seven does not include merchant sailors.

 

Phil

 

 

[phil andrade]

15 hours ago, Alan24 said:

Phil, 

Now that I've sent you the full list, you'll see that the very first man on the roll died on 21 Sept 1918 having been gassed on 20 Sept 1918.

It it therefore the case that death by gas poisoning must be included in the KIA or DOW figures.

Also published is a complete breakdown of awards and honours gained by these 3454 men. I'll post that shortly for the interest of the other posters on this thread.

Forgive me, Alan, I’ve been casting my eye over the huge list, and failed to see this.

What am I missing ?

 

editing : apologies, just picked it up. My little iPhone screen didn’t accommodate the expanded list, and, of course, I looked more carefully and found the man and his fate.

 

Phil

Edited 8 December , 2022 by phil andrade

[phil andrade]

Alan,

This is a wonderful register to extrapolate from.

An  all too brief survey suggests a higher maritime contingent than the national average.

Several of the dead have been cited as dying In Turkish captivity and are, I presume, consigned to deaths from disease rather than being included in the prisoner of war total. This is the same with that gas fatality : he’s included in the killed or died from wounds, as you suggested, but not in the aggregate for gas casualties.

The significant disease toll certainly reflects the ravages of service  in Mesopotamia, where cholera  took the life of Maude, the commander in chief out there.

I suspect, but cannot be sure, that the rather high ratio of killed reflects the inclusion of men who died of wounds who, in the Official Medical Statistics, would have been recorded separately from the killed in action.

Winchester obviously had a very proud tradition regarding military triumph. Alfred the Great comes to mind immediately. I know that the Victorians were very keen to commemorate his victories over the Danes : whenever I go and stay in Swanage I see the memorial on the sea front that marks his naval triumph over a Danish fleet.

A schoolboy in Winchester in the years before the Great War would have been weaned on this tradition.

 

Phil

[Alan24]

4 hours ago, phil andrade said:

Several of the dead have been cited as dying In Turkish captivity

That will be the 4th Btn Hampshire Regt TF men captured at Kut-Al-Amara. There is one man, Sgt. CH Russell, who also died in Turkey but isn't even listed as a casualty. 

I can recommend this book which includes a copy of the WWSR. I did make quite a few contributions the book including the cover photo which is of the CH Russell mentioned above. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Debt-Honour-Winchester-Citys-First/dp/1906978654