Casualty Figures

[Tim Birch]

The thread currently running on the Missing is showing some mind boggling figures. It is difficult to get your head round the sheer scale of the missing and dead in the Great War. In his book "The Missing of the Somme", Geoff Dyer discusses the Centotaph or empty tomb, being the symbol of the nation's grief. To get an idea of just how large a figure that for the British dead and missing is, he describes how, if they were somehow resurrected and marched in column of 4 abreast past the Centotaph, it would take three and a half days and nights for the column to pass!

A similar calculation for the French dead would take 11 days and nights to pass the Arc de Triomphe.

Tim