Activity 1: Statistics, wounds and gas. Statistics Between 1914 and 1918 the British Army in France and Flanders sustained no fewer than 2.7 million battle casualties. Of the 2.7 million just over a quarter were never seen by the medical services. Those...
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Activity 1: Statistics, wounds and gas. Statistics Between 1914 and 1918 the British Army in France and Flanders sustained no fewer than 2.7 million battle casualties. Of the 2.7 million just over a quarter were never seen by the medical services. Those were the men who had been killed, were missing or were prisoners of war. Just under three quarters of the total number of casualties were seen by the medical services, of whom 5.6 per cent of the total - 151,356 - died of their wounds. In an assessment of nearly a quarter of a million casualties admitted to the casualty clearing stations in France and Flanders the majority were caused by high explosives or shrapnel. When men went over the top, then rifle and particularly machine-gun bullets took their toll. Hand-to-hand fighting within the trenches, moving from one segment of a trench to another, resulted in wounds caused by handheld bombs and grenades. Bayonet wounds were conspicuous by their absence, either because they didn't occur a
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