Killed in Action or Died of Wounds?

[Clive Maier]

Soldiers Died in the Great War often lists the mode of death. The most common modes, not surprisingly, are Killed in Action or Died of Wounds. Those who were killed instantly or died where they fell were obviously KiA. Those who succumbed to their injuries days or weeks later, having been removed from the immediate scene of fighting, seem equally obviously to belong to the DoW classification. In between, there is a vast grey area. What if a soldier died at the most forward dressing station for example, or on the way to it? KiA or DoW?

So my question is, were there generally accepted definitions for these terms? Of course, even if there were, I do understand that SDGW would be bound to contain numerous mistakes of classification.

[Neil Mackenzie]

Cliv.

This thread from earlier this year also discussed this topic.

Neil

http://www.1914-1918.org/forum/index.php?a...=died+of+wounds

[Clive Maier]

Neil,

Thanks for pointing out that thread. It is recent so I imagine it contains more or less all the forum has to say on the topic. There are interesting and plausible conjectures but no definitive answer.

If the dead were classified on the spot as KiA or DoW, there must have been some sort of definition. It may well have been woolly and no doubt half the people who needed to know were never told but even so, it should have existed. If the classifications came along later as part of the burial and commemorative effort, then there may have been no clear definition because the original circumstances had already become cloudy. I can imagine those who were ‘obviously’ killed on the spot being classified KiA and all the others being DoW, without anyone quite knowing what was meant by ‘obviously’. People would have used their own discretion, and maybe erred in favour of KiA. It may well be that the thing is so fraught with error and individual interpretation that the distinction is no longer worth making almost 90 years on. After all, they all died of wounds. Only the timing is in question.

The matter interests me because my uncle Oscar is listed as killed in action but his burial place is inconsistent with being killed on the spot. Some 75 men of his battalion were killed alongside him but none is buried with him. According to CWGC, his burial plot is original, not a later collection. I conjecture that he was injured in heavy fighting in Delville Wood and almost immediately either died or was killed on the short journey to Mametz, where he lies today in Dantzig Alley cemetery. Lyn Macdonald’s Somme includes a harrowing eye-witness account of conditions on the ambulance track between Mametz and Delville Wood, and tells of the bombardment being such that injured men were hit again or killed in their ambulances as they made for Mametz.

[Annette Burgoyne]

Hi Clive

Your uncle may have been a runner or with part of the battalion not in the front line like H.Q. ? so he may well have been killed in action. Killed in action does not have to mean he was taking part in an attack, I take it to mean killed on the spot, a man of the K.S.L.I. killed in Pop., during an air raid is recorded as killed in action.

Regards

Annette