The average life expectancy in the trenches was about six weeks, with junior officers and stretcher bearers being among those most at risk.
A key finding was that the 1914 cohort had a significantly shorter lifespan than the late 1918 “non-combat” cohort, with median age of death being 65.9 versus 74.2, respectively (a difference of 8.3 years). Figure 1 shows the associated Kaplan-Meier survival curves⇓ (log rank P<0.001).
Ellison had survived four years of trench warfare, including fighting in the battles of Ypres and the Somme. However at 40 years old, he was shot while out on the outskirts of Mons and killed at 9.30am on 11 November 1918, a day we now mark as Remembrance Day.
The average life expectancy of a subaltern in the trenches was a mere six weeks.
World War I fighter pilots had a typical life expectancy of several weeks while flying in combat. Several weeks. Not much at all. In terms of flying hours, a combat pilot could count on 40 to 60 hours before being killed, at least in the early part of the war.
Aged eighteen, Wellum signed up on a short-service commission with the Royal Air Force in August 1939. The first aircraft he flew was the Tiger Moth at Desford airfield in Leicestershire. Wellum's first solo flight was on 1 September 1939. Two days later Britain declared war on Germany.
In all the various nations' fledgling air forces, 'only' 50,000 or so aircrew died during World War I, a tiny fraction of the nine million lives lost in the fighting overall. Nonetheless, airmen shared with the infantry a 70 per cent chance of injury or death.
About one to every 10,000 men. With one exception – I'll speak about that later – there has been no widespread disease among the armies on the western front. This is a splendid record. In our previous wars thousands of soldiers died in hospitals without ever seeing action.
Following his death and funeral, there were two surviving World War I veterans, British-born Florence Green and British Australian citizen Claude Choules, both of whom served in the British Armed Forces.
The soldier fired into No Man's Land, the area between the enemy trenches. Soldiers were ordered to keep firing even if they did not see anything. This was called the “morning hate.” The constant fire would keep the enemy from sneaking up on the trench.
By far, artillery was the biggest killer in World War I, and provided the greatest source of war wounded.
For a serviceman who joined the army at the beginning of the war the probability of survival to the end of the conflict is 0.74 for officers and 0.85 for other ranks.
Jean Thurel finally died in 1807, following a short illness. He was 108. After nine full decades as a soldier, he remained a private throughout, never dropping off the regiment's active duty list.
The oldest soldier to enlist in WWI is quartermaster sergeant Robert Frederick Robertson (UK, b. 12 September 1842), who was 71 years of age when he enlisted in late 1914. Robert's service records were destroyed in a WW2 bombing raid, however census reports and newspaper articles date his enlistment as late 1914.
Henry Nicholas John Gunther (June 6, 1895 – November 11, 1918) was an American soldier and possibly the last soldier of any of the belligerents to be killed during World War I. He was killed at 10:59 a.m., about one minute before the Armistice was to take effect at 11:00 a.m.
The Triple Entente (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million military personnel while the Central Powers lost about 4 million. At least 2 million died from diseases and 6 million went missing, presumed dead.
Senior ranking officials were caught up in the conflict too. More than 200 Generals, including Lieutenant-Generals and Major-Generals and other high ranks, were killed, wounded, or captured between 1914-1918. For the British, 78 officers of Brigadier-General rank or higher would die during the Great War.
Second World War: fatalities per country 1939-1945. Estimates for the total death count of the Second World War generally range somewhere between 70 and 85 million people. The Soviet Union suffered the highest number of fatalities of any single nation, with estimates mostly falling between 22 and 27 million deaths.
As 2,000 paratroopers face 345,000 bullets, across an area of sky covering 9 squares miles, the chances of survival were 1 in 4. But 50% of the men survive. How?
Rotation in and out of the Trenches
Soldiers rotated into and out of the front lines to provide a break from the stress of combat. They spent four to six days in the front trenches before moving back and spending an equal number of days in the secondary and, finally, the reserve trenches.
Manfred von Richthofen, also known as the 'Red Baron', is perhaps the most famous air ace of the First World War. Manfred von Richthofen (1892-1918), also known as the 'Red Baron', is perhaps the most famous air ace of the First World War.
Erich Alfred Hartmann (19 April 1922 – 20 September 1993) was a German fighter pilot during World War II and the most successful fighter ace in the history of aerial warfare.
First World War aircra cockpits were open to the elements and cold winds tended to blow down the neck of pilots' coats. Rather than wearing a high leather collar to stop the wind, which restricted movement and vision, a pilot would use the silk scarf to plug the gaps around his neck and keep his body warm.