Casualty Figures British Isles WW1

[depaor01]

Your project must seem like an exercise in "scope creep" where a project suddenly reveals more work as it progresses. Your expanding parameters will be a hindrance to say the least, but the best of luck in your endeavours.

Dave

[Mk VII]

The Great War was the first in which, in most, theatres (not all), they had finally got to grips with the field hygiene problem which in previous wars usually killed more people battles. 

[phil andrade]

On 01/05/2023 at 14:06, Mk VII said:

The Great War was the first in which, in most, theatres (not all), they had finally got to grips with the field hygiene problem which in previous wars usually killed more people battles. 

Undoubtedly.

There is a kind of deadly corollary apparent : the improved hygiene saved so many lives, but thereby exposed unprecedented numbers to the perils of battle.

Those perils, in the 1914-18 warfare, reached a deadly extreme.

Apart from the hygiene aspect, there were also important improvements in food preservation: the chilling and canning of rations, and the mechanical means of transporting them . Huge armies could be sustained in the field, and combat commensurately so.

There were surely other aspects of modernity that conspired to make battle relentless, especially if it became multi dimensional.

A high degree of technical development can, of course, reduce the numbers of men exposed to the frontline and actually reduce casualties.

Tommy Atkins at Albuhera, (spelling?)facing old black powder muzzle loading weapons, was every bit as likely to be killed or wounded as his counterpart at Ypres a century later- perhaps even more so - but his ordeal by squalour and hardship was even deadlier.

 

Phil