WW1 began just 100 years ago today, August 4th in 1914. So many men never returned at the end of this war. Millions of lives were changed by the devastating losses in the trenches, at sea and in the air. The casualties work out between 4th August 1914 to Monday, 11 November 1918 = 1597 days ( Losses for both sides totals) 9.7 million military deaths = 6074 per day 6.8 million civilian deaths = 4258 per day 16 millions total = 10,018 per day Staggers the imagination and tears at the heart. This sort of loss would not be accepted today and people would not fight in the conditions of mud, cold, rats, bad food, death and decaying bodies, lack of washing facilities and the noise of the shelling, constantly through the night would have caused people today to walk away. In those days they were shot by their own officers for this. These men were of the very best and sacrificed their lives so that Britain and France did not suffer. Was it worth that amount of loss? Even today that question is hard to answer. What did we gain? We know what we lost. The flower of a generation, cut down by machine gun fire as they were ordered to walk, not run, just behind the creeping Barrage fire which rolled gradually forward. This killed thousands in one day on the Somme, and in places of quicksand like mud where so many drowned, like at Paschendale
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 22:37:17 +0000
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