Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Status:
"“If a thing loves, it is infinite.”"
(set 1 day ago)
Location: Great Britain
27,163 posts, read 13,455,286 times
Reputation: 19459
Advertisements
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander
Casualties means killed, wounded, captured/missing. Killed is an individual category. Check your own links, you are confusing killed and casualties.
No I am not, and I am more than aware of the difference even wiki cites British losses as 481,842.
The actual casualty figure for the first day of the Somme was 56,000 British and Commonwealth troops, with 19,240 lost.
In total 1,332,156 people would be killed during the Battle of the Somme - 481,842 of them British and Commonwealth. The figure 481,842 represents British and Commonwealth Soldiers lost.
Around 17 million fell during The Great War, with 20 million wounded
Even Wiki cites them as lost and not casualities listing author Williams, John F. (2005) as a source.
The above illustrates your confusion. "Lost" does not specifically mean killed, it could reference killed, wounded, captured and missing. Not everyone "lost" was killed. Again, try reading your own links more carefully, the information is there, you just don't seem to be comprehending it for some reason.
From the link you provided: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme
Quote:
Total British Commonwealth Casualties:
419,654
Commonwealth killed
95,675
-
French Casualties
204,253
French killed
50,756
I'm going to give up at this point. I cannot make myself any more clear than I have been in my previous posts.
Last edited by Grandstander; 07-10-2016 at 07:24 AM..
No I am not, and I am more than aware of the difference even wiki cites British losses as 481,842.
The actual casualty figure for the first day of the Somme was 56,000 British and Commonwealth troops, with 19,240 lost.
In total 1,332,156 people would be killed during the Battle of the Somme - 481,842 of them British and Commonwealth. The figure 481,842 represents British and Commonwealth Soldiers lost.
Around 17 million fell during The Great War, with 20 million wounded
The following chart is taken from your own links...
You can clearly see the distinction between "total casualties" and the subset "killed and missing". As Grandstander has been trying to explain, those are two different numbers and the total killed at the Somme is more on the order of 310,000 (95,000 British/Commonwealth, 50,000 French and 164,000 German). The other 780,000 "casualties" are comprised of those wounded or sick during the battle. Of those wounded and sick during WW1, an average of 30% were treated and returned to the front, with the remainder being unable to continue fighting. So, we can assume of the 1+ million "total casulaties"...
310,000 were killed or missing.
234,000 were wounded/sick and returned to the front in relatively short order.
546,000 were wounded to the point that they were unable to return to the front.
So, a bloody and nasty battle/campaign for sure, but nowhere near a million people were killed. Don't feel too bad though because a couple of the journalists in the articles you linked made the same mistake.
What a catastrophic bloodbath the Somme was. I'm often reminded of the classic film by Stanley Kubrick on WWI, "Paths of Glory" (starring Kirk Douglas as Col. Dax in a powerful performance) as to why these tragic bloodbaths continued, and how Generals could evade responsibility for their incompetence.
All but the most senior WWI generals led from the front and suffered fatal casualties in proportion to their numbers.
Though "incompetence" is an easy blame, the horrendous casualty rates had many factors including a lack of offensive technology and false hopes from earlier battles. Other factors were centuries of manure in fields which led to bacteria rich soil and far more fatal infections.
For example, at Loos, a limited British attack made good progress (by WWI standards) against defending Germans. The British high command then concluded that they had a receipe for success: super size the attack with a tremendous bombardment, deliberate infantry advances, then cavalry exploits breaches.
What the British commanders did not realize was that Germans at Loos were second and third string reservists in hastily constructed fortifications. The Somme was totally different in both the quality of the defenders, and their preperations.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
