highest regimental casualties

[Guest tenbears]

Please could anyone tell me which regiment suffered most casualties in total throughout World War I?

many thanks

Kery Sullivan

[Geoff Parker]

Kery

The London Regiment suffered the most casualties. The number

was between 29-30,000. I think one of the Fusilier Regiments had

the second highest casualty rate but can't remember which, although

Northumberland Fusiliers sticks in my mind.

Geoff

[Clive Maier]

A listing in British Regiments 1914-18, EA James, Naval and Military Press gives casualties, battle honours and VCs per regiment.

According to this source:

London Regiment - 29100

Northumberland Fusiliers - 16000

Royal Fusiliers - 15600

[Bill Alexander]

To change the focus, which battalion had the highest single day casualty rate in the British / Imperial forces during WWI?

Some answers for debate

Royal Newfoundland Regt Beaumont Hamel?

4 CMR Mount Sorrel?

(my knowledge is Canadian oriented.)

[Jim_Grundy]

How about the 10th West Yorks on 1st July 1916?

[Terry]

Jim has it bang on for 1 July,1916. Middlebrook lists the battalions with the highest number of casualties as:

- 10/West Yorks 710 all ranks

- 1/Newfoundland 684

- 4/Tyneside Scottish 629

- 1/Tyneside Irish 620

The regular unit with the worst losses that day was 1 Hampshires (585 all ranks killed and wounded).

[Andrew P]

The biggest loss the Australians had for a battalion in a day would be the 60th Battalion at Fromelles on July 19 1916. They went in with around 900 men and had 757 casualties.

The battalion took some months to recover.

Regards

Andrew

[Northern Soul]

At Frezenberg on May 8th, 1915, the 2nd King's Own were virtually wiped out. The battalion was eleven hundred strong at the beginning of the day; by the end of the day it could only muster sixty-seven, and after all those had rejoined who had become detached in the fighting the casualties were eventually found to be fifteen officers and eight hundred and ninety-three other ranks. The casualties suffered by the Regiment on that day were the worst in its history. On the King's Own panels on the Menin Gate, one third of the names were men killed on 8/5/15.

Andy.

[Chris_B]

According to Mullay's history of the South Lancashire Regiment (The Prince of Wales's Volunteers) and J.O.Coop's History of the 55th Division during the German counter offensive on the Cambrai flank on 30th November, the 1/5th Bn of the SLR were cut off, surrounded and running out of ammunition fought to the last man. The history records "no man (in the line) returned" - no survivors no prisoners (?)

Chris Burge

[Chris Noble]

1st/5th West Yorks, 25th/26th April 1918.

Quote Lieut. Colonel W. Oddie's report.

"On 26th we remained as part of the garrison in reserve trenches until 9.00pm when our party of 3 officers and 21 other ranks (out of 22 officers and 580 other ranks in the trenches on the morning of 25th April), marched into camp at Ouderdom".

Sobering thought.

Chris.

[CROONAERT]

According to Mullay's history of the South Lancashire Regiment (The Prince of Wales's Volunteers) and J.O.Coop's History of the 55th Division during the German counter offensive on the Cambrai flank on 30th November, the 1/5th Bn of the SLR were cut off, surrounded and running out of ammunition fought to the last man. The history records "no man (in the line) returned" - no survivors no prisoners (?)

Following several attempts to get in touch with Battalion HQ on this day, a message was recieved at 7:43am on this day stating "We know nothing yet, OK".

Apart from a few officers and men left behind in the transport lines, basically all of the remainder of the battalion (21 officers and 540 OR's) were either killed or captured that day.

Dave.

[mordac]

To change the focus, which battalion had the highest single day casualty rate in the British / Imperial forces during  WWI?

Some answers for debate

Royal Newfoundland Regt Beaumont Hamel?

Hi Bill:

The story of Newfoundland's participation in WWI is one of pride mixed with sorrow and loss. Newfoundland suffered the highest proportional loss of any country during the war; 5500 men served, approximately 1500 were killed. In the first hour of fighting on July 1, 1916 the Newfoundland Regiment had 700 casualties including 300 killed.

A poignant reminder of Newfoundland's loss is contained in 'The Danger Tree: Memory, War, And The Search For A Families Past' by David Macfarlane. From pages 192-193:

"...But the cost was higher than anyone dreamed. The war dragged on. Of the 5,482 men who went overseas, two-thirds were killed or wounded—the largest proportion of casualties suffered by an overseas contingent of the imperial forces. And the debt that Newfoundland undertook to prove its loyalty to the Empire and to demonstrate its own national pride proved to be as uncontrollable in the years after the war as casualties had been during it. The cost of equipping, clothing, arming, training, feeding, and paying the regiment was compounded by the cost of caring for the wounded and families of the dead. By 1932, Newfoundland had borrowed close to forty million dollars for "war purposes," more than doubling its pre-war debt. It carried this—the price for its great moment of nationalism—into the teeth of the Depression, and never recovered. Newfoundland's role in the Great War let inexorably to bankruptcy, to an unelected government, to the colony's abandonment by England, and, finally, to confederation with Canada."

As a footnote, the Newfoundlanders were the only regiment who earned the title "Royal" during the Great War.

Garth

[paul guthrie]

There is an excellent book on the Newfoundlanders available in paperback Story of a Blue Puttee or something close to that.

[mordac]

There is an excellent book on the Newfoundlanders available in paperback Story of a Blue Puttee or something close to that.

Hi Paul:

I think your referring to:

'Memoirs of A Blue Putee: The Newfoundland Regiment in World War One' by Jean Stacey (ISBN: 0968420915).

I agree, it's a good little book.

Garth

[duckman]

1st/5th West Yorks, 25th/26th April 1918.

Quote Lieut. Colonel W. Oddie's report.

"On 26th we remained as part of the garrison in reserve trenches until 9.00pm when our party of 3 officers and 21 other ranks (out of 22 officers and 580 other ranks in the trenches on the morning of 25th April), marched into camp at Ouderdom".

Sobering thought.

Chris.

Interesting quote, Chris. I would have though there would be a few units from 5th Army or the Flesquieres Salient with similar tales between 21 March and 25 April 1918. Any others?

Could you let us know where the 1/5 West Yorks were at the time? I'm guessing just south of the Somme valley?

cheers

Duckman

[CROONAERT]

[Could you let us know where the 1/5 West Yorks were at the time? I'm guessing just south of the Somme valley?

Duckman.

They were in the area of Grand Bois/Wijtschaete/Vierstraat at this point and were involved in the "Second Battle of Kemmel Ridge".

Dave.

[Guest tenbears]

Thanks to all for this most useful thread

Kerry Sullivan

[Howitzer6]

Does anyone know what the casualty rates on the artillery would have been??

[MelPack]

There was a recent thread that suggested that the death rate for the British armed services was around 8% but that figure was reached by simply dividing the number of deaths into the total number that was mobilised during the course of the war.

I have done some number crunching on randomly selected regiments by dividing the number of deaths recorded by the CWGC between 4 August 1914 to 11 November 1918 according to the ascribed regiment and the number of MICs that record the same regiment in a soldier's service overseas and came up with the following sample results:

MICs CWGC Deaths %

Royal Berks 39,254 7,025 17.9

Lancashire Fusiliers 76,356 13,352 17.7

Cameron Highlanders 29,568 5,909 19.9

Durham Light Infantry 83,425 12,720 15.3

Northamptonshires 37,799 6,152 16.3

North'land Fusiliers 102,785 17,045 16.6

Welsh Guards 4,763 847 17.8

Coldstream Guards 18,949 3,883 20.5

The above is a far from perfect methodology to establish the death rate of the front line PBI because there are an enormous number of variables at work. For example, the MICs include battalions of regiments that served overseas but not in a theatre of war (thereby having a BWM entitlement), some Regiments had labour battalions (much lower death rates) before the formation of the Labour Corps, death rates between the theatres of war varied widely etc.

As a broad approach, I think that anyone serving in a front line PBI battalion on the Western Front, irrespective of the regiment, had about a 20% chance of being killed.

Mel

[Coldstreamer]

Never knew the casualty rate for the CG was so high compared to others - esp considering there was a pioneer btn with much fewer casualties in it

[IPT]

Army Service Corps would be the life for me - 2.2%

I get 36% for Sherwood Foresters. Am I doing something wrong, or is that correct?

[nigelcave]

QUOTE (Bill Alexander @ Thu, 27 Nov 2003 04:16:42 +0000)

To change the focus, which battalion had the highest single day casualty rate in the British / Imperial forces during WWI?

Some answers for debate

Royal Newfoundland Regt Beaumont Hamel?

Hi Bill:

The story of Newfoundland's participation in WWI is one of pride mixed with sorrow and loss. Newfoundland suffered the highest proportional loss of any country during the war; 5500 men served, approximately 1500 were killed. In the first hour of fighting on July 1, 1916 the Newfoundland Regiment had 700 casualties including 300 killed.

A poignant reminder of Newfoundland's loss is contained in 'The Danger Tree: Memory, War, And The Search For A Families Past' by David Macfarlane. From pages 192-193:

"...But the cost was higher than anyone dreamed. The war dragged on. Of the 5,482 men who went overseas, two-thirds were killed or wounded—the largest proportion of casualties suffered by an overseas contingent of the imperial forces. And the debt that Newfoundland undertook to prove its loyalty to the Empire and to demonstrate its own national pride proved to be as uncontrollable in the years after the war as casualties had been during it. The cost of equipping, clothing, arming, training, feeding, and paying the regiment was compounded by the cost of caring for the wounded and families of the dead. By 1932, Newfoundland had borrowed close to forty million dollars for "war purposes," more than doubling its pre-war debt. It carried this—the price for its great moment of nationalism—into the teeth of the Depression, and never recovered. Newfoundland's role in the Great War let inexorably to bankruptcy, to an unelected government, to the colony's abandonment by England, and, finally, to confederation with Canada."

As a footnote, the Newfoundlanders were the only regiment who earned the title "Royal" during the Great War.

Garth

Hmm -one way of looking at it - ie the finances and so forth, though it would be asinine to argue anything other than that the Great War had an enormous impact on a relatively small population. Further complications provided by its varying constitutional status - self governing colony/dominion etc. What cannot be denied at all is the enormous contribution made by Nfd relative to its population size. Love the 'England' bit - falling into the German war history/accounts tendency of calling all Brits English.

[WilliamRev]

As ever in threads such as this (and we've had quite a few over the years haven't we?) it seems that some people are talking about deaths - we can count these in Soldiers Died - and others about "casualties" - which are those killed, wounded, missing, taken prisoner (and on some lists those away on leave).

Things are complicated by those battalion/regiment histories (such as John Buchan's History of the Royal Scots Fusilers, to mention one with which I am familiar) which take their figures exclusively from the war diaries, which have interim casualty figures appropriate for a day or so after the action, and don't take account of the fact that many wounded die, and most of the "missing" turn out to be dead, (but sometines prisoners and very much alive).

William

[8055Bell]

Hi Mel,

The Royal Berks provided some reinforcements to the Manchester Regiment and suffered a lot of further losses with the new badge. Stats always have another story I suppose.

Tim

[purley]

I have a block of Royal Berkshiremen going to the Manchesters as 43271 to 43343 but do not have all the names associated with the Manchester numbers - do you Tim?

John