For a horrendous Allied casualty rate, the British Bomber Command in the Second World War suffered 50% losses.
Which makes Churchills refusal to recognise their sacrifice in the V-Day speech even more despicable. (he thanked all the other services)
I doubt that the ANZAC casualties were so high because of Gallipoli. There were far larger French, English and of course Turkish forces there. It is a misconception that it was mainly ANZAC forces at the landing (and I’m not certain that you were trying to convey that). Gallipoli was horrendous, as was the western (and Eastern) front.
Good point and one that I missed. The death:mobilisation % are:
Australia 18%
Canada 11%
Great Britain 13%
New Zealand 16%
South Africa 5%
French Empire 18%
Germany 16%
Russia 14%
USA 3%
That means that the deaths still sort the countries into roughly the same order as before, although the French % drops rapidly:
- French Empire French Empire
- New Zealand Australia
- Australia New Zealand
- Russia Germany
- Germany Russia
- Great Britain Great Britain
- Canada Canada
- South Africa South Africa
- USA USA
(How the hell do I get tabs to display correctly? Apologies for the display problems here.)
Actually, I was. Thanks for setting me straight. If we stick to deaths, it seems that Australia lost 7.5k-8k men at Gallipoli and NZ ~2.5k (out of total Allied deaths of 50k-60k). I couldn’t find relative troop commintments, but it seems that there were far more British and French troops there than ANZACs.
So, looking just at deaths:mobilisation to avoid the wounded double-count problem, why were Australian and NZ deaths so relatively high compared to Britain and Canada? If the British were sending the colonials into the tough spots, you’d expect higher Canadian losses. Also, why were SA losses so low? Were they mobilised and then largely used for African garrison duties?
I think you may have hit on the answer in your thinking about South African garrison duties. I seem to recall that the ANZAC’s did not have conscription and thus were volunteers. Now who is going to volunteer and then stay home on garrison duty - I suspect they would have been down for overseas service. And on arrival in Europe they were volunteers, and elite, so were the British going to use them on garrison duty in Europe. No. It looks like there will be an inbuild bias that they are going to be at the front more than the average British soldier.
Great Britain kept large numbers of troops on home service, in part to control industrial and potential social unrest in the latter part of the War, plus of course the troops keeping Ireland down after the 1916 Rebellion. Plus if I am right in para one, there will be proportionally higher numbers of Brits doing duty like transport officers, supply, drivers etc. It all depends on what proportion are exposed to danger rather than the degree of danger I suspect.
Just a theory but if you are looking at deaths versus total number mobilised I think you can expect some statistical bias to always creep in.
“Half a league,
half a league,
half a league onward,
with a hey-nonnie nonnie,
and a hot-cha-cha!”
P. G. Wodehouse
sorry, couldn’t resist.
I recently read The Hinge Factor: How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History by Erik Durschmied. It had a chapter about the Charge of the Light Brigade. Pretty much what notquitekarpov posted. It also covered other military encounters. Pretty good reading if you can stomach it. (Not overly graphic, just unreal, some of the carnage.)
There is an excellent book on the Charge of the Light Brigade, written by Cecil Woodham-Smith. Informative, well-written, and interesting. And out of print, but you can find used copies an Amazon. The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade (Classic Military History) .
She also wrote a brilliant account of the Irish potatoe famine, titled The Great Hunger
She’s a teriffic writer. Both books are history writing at its best. Boo yah!
FWIW I saw a documentary supporting notquitekarpov’s post. Nolan basically had a bee in his bonnet that cavalry could charge guns successfully, and saw the ambiguous order as a chance to prove it - they left open whether it was deliberate misinterpretation or a genuine misunderstanding.
Regarding the South African troops, the Boer War hadn’t been that long before and I think it is fair to say that there may have been mixed views about commitment to the cause of the British Empire- given that Germany had supported the Boers. In any case there needed to be a strong garrison presence due to unrest at home (in RSA).
The Canadians had an excellent reputation as troops (deservedly) and were used often as storm troops- much the same as the Australians. Why the difference in the casualty figures? Who knows- it was wholesale slaughter.
Regarding re-enlisting- one of my great uncles fought at Gallipoli, was injured severely enough to be repatriated out and returned to Australia. After the losses in the Somme campaign he re-enlisted and went back to join his brother in France. By the time he arrived in France the brother was dead. The brother who re-enlisted died in the last battle his battalion fought before the armistice.
Except these numbers are “killed or wounded,” not just killed. Still, incredible.
Bumped.
This is cool. Hear a bugle played at both Waterloo and for the Charge of the Light Brigade, recorded 1890: Trumpeter Landfrey's Charge of the Light Brigade : Trumpeter Landfrey : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
I wonder, too - the Crimean War was about the same time as the American Civil War. Both inflicted massive casualties due to the evolution of military technology that had not really been tested in pitched battles between matched forces much before that time. (And a similar debacle in WWI when the technology advanced even further). Tactics evolved up to the Napoleonic wars were less effective against greater numbers of powerful guns and more deadly accurate fire. However, the old saying is that generals are always ready to fight the previous war.
Yes, although the account has been greatly romanticized throughout history, it was horrible military strategy. It was basically mass suicide.
Not if the Light Brigade had gone up the correct valley as was strategized.
Australian combatants were part of the Australian Imperial Force, which was essentially at that stage all volunteer frontline forces, with significant logistical support only coming later. Constitutionally and legally it was distinct from the Australian Army, which was not allowed to serve beyond Australia. Part of the high casualty profile of the Australians and New Zealanders was because of that skew towards having most of its troops as infantry and cavalry, rather than supply column. That changed as the war dragged on.
as an aside, read Flashman at the Charge is a 1973 novel by George MacDonald Fraser which is fairly accurate if humorous
The harbour was mined. The Russians were early adopters of the new invention: the British had rejected the idea. Because the harbour was mined, the British had to land supplies miles down the coast.
Back at home, people didn’t understand what the problem was. At the front, soldiers only saw the failure of supply. “The harbour was mined” was an idea outside their general conception.
Pickett’s Charge (ordered by Lee) was arguably as foolish as the Charge of the Light Brigade. At that point in the Civil War, there was evidence of the futility of frontal assaults against strong defensive positions, especially when defenders had ample weaponry like grapeshot and cannons.
A more modern semi-equivalent of the Charge of the Light Brigade was in the Battle off Samar in 1944, when U.S. destroyers charged a far superior Japanese force that included battleships and cruisers, suffering serious losses but helping to save the rest of the American fleet.
I wonder too about the logic of “going over the top” in the trenches of WWI. It seems the logic was “send 1,000 men and 100 will get through to kill the other side.” Analytical thinking by the generals who did not have to participate themselves. And… 100 did not get through, but the generals had to show, “we tried”.
The theory was that artillery would soften up the line, but they unknowingly were overshooting the line.