Perhaps the most horrific statistic of World War 1, was the unbelievable loss of human life.  Men from all countries and walks of life were blatently sent to face almost certain death, by taking part in suicidal charges at the enemy.  Being cut to ribbons by opposing machine gun fire as the ran across "No mans land".

 

Countries	Total Mobilized	Killed & Died	Wounded	Prisoners & Missing	Total Casualties	Casualties % of Mobilized
Allied Powers
Russia	12,000,000	1,700,000	4,950,000	2,500,000	9,150,000	76.3
France	8,410,000	1,357,800	4,266,000	537,000	6,160,800	76.3
British Empire	8,904,467	908,371	2,090,212	191,652	3,190,235	35.8
Italy	5,615,000	650,000	947,000	600,000	2,197,000	39.1
United States	4,355,000	126,000	234,300	4,500	364,800	8.2
Japan	800,000	300	907	3	1,210	0.2
Romania	750,000	335,706	120,000	80,000	535,706	71.4
Serbia	707,343	45,000	133,148	152,958	331,106	46.8
Belgium	267,000	13,716	44,686	34,659	93,061	34.9
Greece	230,000	5,000	21,000	1,000	17,000	11.7
Portugal	100,000	7,222	13,751	12,318	33,291	33.3
Montenegro	50,000	3,000	10,000	7,000	20,000	40.0
Total	42,188,810	5,152,115	12,831,004	4,121,090	22,104,209	52.3
Central Powers
Germany	11,000,000	1,773,700	4,216,058	1,152,800	7,142,558	64.9
Austria-Hungary	7,800,000	1,200,000	3,620,000	2,200,000	7,020,000	90.0
Turkey	2,850,000	325,000	400,000	250,000	975,000	34.2
Bulgaria	1,200,000	87,500	152,390	27,029	266,919	22.2
Total	22,850,000	3,386,200	8,388,448	3,629,829	15,404,477	67.4
Grand Total	65,038,810	8,538,315	21,219,452	7,750,919	37,508,686	57.6

If you find the Above figures frightening  (And you should)  Then concider this.  The above figures are NOT inclusive of (a) Soldiers executed by their own side, for various offences, or (b) Civilians killed during the fighting.

In both cases information of the death totals are hard to come by.  Either countries are not willing to release figures or (In the case of Civilians) records were not accurately kept.

British Soldiers Executed during WW1

 

When the British Army went into action in the summer of 1914,  a number of offences were punishable with death.  This included mutiny, cowardice before the enemy, self-inflicted wounds, disobedience of a lawful order, desertion or attempted desertion, sleeping or being drunk on post, striking a superior officer, casting away arms or ammunition in the presence of the enemy, leaving a post without orders, abandoning a position, and treacherously communicated with or in any way assisting the enemy. 

A total of 304 were executed during the First World War, while another 18 suffered the same fate while waiting to leave the army after the signing of the Armistice.  Of those executed, the vast majority, 286, committed the offence while in the trenches on the Western Front.

 

Executions in the British Army: 1914-1918
Offence	1914	1915	1916	1917	1918
Desertion	3	46	71	90	35
Cowardice	1	4	10	2	-
Quitting Post	-	2	2	2	1
Disobedience	-	1	3	1	-
Murder	-	2	4	3	10
Striking a superior officer	-	-	3	1	-
Casting away arms	-	-	1	1	-
Mutiny	-	-	1	2	-
Sleeping on post	-	-	-	2	-
Totals	4	55	95	104	46

Arthur Savage was ordered to execute one of his own men in 1917.

"I was ordered to go on a firing squad in 1917.  The man was lead out by a military policeman and a priest.  Then he was tied to this post.  He only looked about twenty and wasn't very tall.  An officer went up to put a blindfold over his eyes.  I can hear his voice now, as clear as me and you talking in this room."  He said  "I need no blindfold over my eyes.  Curse you and your blindfold and may the judges who will surely sentence you one day show you more mercy than you've shown me."

"Then we had to take aim.  My hands were shaking so much.  So I aimed about a foot to his left.  Then we fired.  There were nine of us and only one shot caught him in the side.  He slumped forward wounded.  So I was not the only one firing wide deliberately.  The captain walked up to him and put a bullet into his head.  Some of the men were sick, others were crying."

Most of the poor sods were mainly convicted on the evidence of doctors.  They would not accept that men could reach a point of utter exhaustion when as a result of trench warfare their nerves and brains would snap.  These so-called 'doctors' would not have it that there was such an illness as shell-shock.  They insisted that men were cowards and deserters.

At the age of fourteen,Victor Silvester ran away from Ardingly College and joined the army.  In an interview he gave just before his death in 1978, he described how he was ordered to execute a man for desertion.

"We marched to the quarry outside Staples at dawn.  The victim was brought out from a shed and led struggling to a chair to which he was then bound and a white handkerchief placed over his heart as our target area.  He was said to have fled in the face of the enemy.

Mortified by the sight of the poor wretch tugging at his bonds, twelve of us, on the order raised our rifles unsteadily.  Some of the men, unable to face the ordeal, had got themselves drunk overnight.  They could not have aimed straight if they tried, and, contrary to popular belief, all twelve rifles were loaded.  The condemned man had also been plied with whisky during the night, but I remained sober through fear.

The tears were rolling down my cheeks as he went on attempting to free himself from the ropes attaching him to the chair.  I aimed blindly and when the gunsmoke had cleared away we were further horrified to see that, although wounded, the intended victim was still alive.  Still blindfolded, he was attempting to make a run for it still strapped to the chair.  The blood was running freely from a chest wound.  An officer in charge stepped forward to put the finishing touch with a revolver held to the poor man's temple.  He had only once cried out and that was when he shouted the one word  'mother'.  He could not have been much older than me.  We were told later that he had in fact been suffering from shell-shock, a condition not recognised by the army at the time.  Later I took part in four more such executions."

George Coppard,  I believe that an important modification of the death sentence also took place in 1917.  It appeared that the military authorities were compelled to take heed of the clamour against the death sentences imposed by courts martial.  There had been too many of them.  As a result, a man who would otherwise have been executed was instead compelled to take part in the fore-front of the first available raid or assault on the enemy.  He was purposely placed in the first wave to cross No Man's Land and it was left to the Almighty to decide his fate.  This was the situation as we Tommies understood it, but nothing official reached our ears.  Let the War Office dig out its musty files and tell us how many men were treated in this way, and how many survived the cruel sentences.  Shylock, in demanding his pound of flesh, had got nothing on the military bigwigs in 1917.

Private George Morgan,  18th West Yorkshire Regiment,  interviewed in 1978.

"These two men got drunk and they wandered away and got caught and were brought back and were charged with absenteeism on active service."

They laughed it off, they thought wandering away was just something or nothing:  but they were court-martialled and they were sentenced to be shot, subject to Sir Douglas Haig.  He could have said no, but he didn't.  So they were shot.  They were described as being killed in action.  I remember a letter years ago in the local paper, in which some lady was asking what happened to my brother?  That was what had happened to her brother.

Civilians killed

The Great War, and the "War to End All Wars" was a conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918.  Chemical weapons were used for the first time, the first mass bombardment of civilians from the sky was executed, and some of the century's first genocides took place during the war.

As previously stated many countries didn't count  (or release accurate figures)  Civilian casualties.  So the numbers below are basic estimates, the real count would be probably higher ...a lot higher!

Russia:  3,000,000
Serbia:  650,000
Ottoman Empire:  1,000,000
United Kingdom:  31,000


Total civilians killed:  approximately 6.5 million

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A re-cap upon the Total Killed.

Soldiers Killed - 68,538,315

Civilians killed -6,500,00  (Approx)

Soldiers Executed - 304  (Uk figures only)


Grand total - 15,038,619

Note:  These figures do not take into account the further 7,750,919 personal listed captured or missing in action.

Some think the total loss of life in the First World War could easily reach 20,000,000.

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