Surviving the Deluge: British Servicemen in World War I

We estimate the correlates of death and injury in action during the First World War for a sample of 2,400 non-officer British servicemen who were born in the 1890s. Among these 13.1 percent were killed in action and another 23.5 percent were wounded. Not surprisingly we find that the probability of death or wounding increases with time in the army and was higher among infantrymen. For a serviceman who enlisted in the infantry at the beginning of the war and continued in service, the probability of being killed in action was 29 percent and the probability of being either killed or wounded in action was 64 percent. We examine, for ordinary soldiers, the hypothesis that death and injury was more likely for those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds as is suggested in the literature on the ‘lost generation’. While such selectivity applies when comparing officers with other ranks it does not apply among the ordinary soldiers who comprised 95 percent of the army.