Death distinction

[kin47]

Hello

For classification, can someone tell me where the line falls between a man being killed or dying of wounds? If he dies within an hour, two hours, etc of his fatal injury is he classified as killed?

The obvious is understood, but there are instances where wounded, dying of wounds, are officially carried as killed.

I hope there is some accepted criteria.

Thank you.

don

[markacable]

Hello

For classification, can someone tell me where the line falls between a man being killed or dying of wounds? If he dies within an hour, two hours, etc of his fatal injury is he classified as killed?

The obvious is understood, but there are instances where wounded, dying of wounds, are officially carried as killed.

I hope there is some accepted criteria.

Thank you.

don

My Great Uncle was listed as "Died of Wounds" by the CWGC. He was also listed wounded the same day by the war diary. Not sure if this is of any help, but I'd like to know too.

[clive_hughes]

Hi folks,

I'm very willing to be corrected on this, but to the best of my understanding the difference lies in the official timing of the news of wounding / death etc.

A man killed outright may be obviously KIA, but the date for his KIA depends on how fast his unit transmitted his casualty status to higher authority. I seem to remember in Dr.Dunn's The War The Infantry Knew an incident where one or two men were killed one evening, and it being remarked that the officers obviously wouldn't pass on the news to Battalion till the next status report was due, the following morning. So despite being killed one day, the date of casualty report would be next day, and be the date given to the family and eventually published by "Soldiers Died" and the CWGC as the official date KIA.

If he was "Missing", or "Wounded and Missing" that was the report & date passed on to the War office & thence to family, to be corrected some time later as "Prisoner Of War" or "death assumed to have taken place on..."

An extreme example of the way this messes up dates can be seen in the way the casualties of the 1/5th Norfolk Regt. at Suvla Bay were communicated. A study of the dates of casualties in SDGW showed that most of the men who went missing during the famous "vanished battalion" action are listed as KIA with dates a couple of weeks later! This is presumably because the first casualty returns to mention them were not sent in until the dates in question. And those are the ones that count officially.

This procedure bedevills those of us who sometimes have to reconcile conflicting casualty dates in SDGW/CWGC against those in newspapers or on war memorials etc.

With those who Died Of Wounds, there must first have been sufficient time for a "Wounded" report to have been made out & sent to higher authority. If the person subsequently died, this was corrected to DOW, whether the gap between the two reports was hours, days, months or whatever. But if someone was brought in wounded to an aid post or field ambulance and died shortly afterwards, they could be classed as KIA if insufficient time had elapsed for a clerk to send off the preliminary wounding report.

The way casualties and reports were handled on the British side on the Western Front makes me apply a very rough rule of thumb: KIA usually means died the same day they were hit - DOW usually means died the next day or subsequently. Obvious exceptions as in Dunn and the Norfolks above, but it's just a working rule. Lack of exact accounts of peoples' deaths usually won't allow us to know any better.

Hope that's intelligible!! Let's face it, ALL casualties die of their wounds! The difference here is just one of official timespan in reporting their status or changed status.

LST_164

[Dobrobbichop]

Rule of thumb - if he reached proper medical attention (say at least Dressing Station) then Died of Wounds. If not, then Killed in Action.