WWI : odds to cross the man's land alive
Upvote:3
First, I will assume that OP refers to the case of going over the top on an assault rather than engaging in a surreptitious raid across no-man's land.
Consider the assault on Vimy Ridge by the Canadian Corps over Easter Weekend, 1917. The assault was performed over 4 days by 15,000 men of the Canadian Corps, of whom nearly 3600 would die and over 7,000 more would be wounded. This gave a survival rate of about 76%, and a not-wounded rate of about 29%.
The odds during the earlier French and British assault on Vimy were worse.
Similarly, it is widely held that the survival rate of junior officers, those fools standing tall and exhorting the men to greater effort, was substantially worse than average.
Update:
It is argued below that my phrasing those fools above is inappropriate, as those individuals were merely brave. I disagree, and offer as evidence the definition of Foolhardy: recklessly bold or rash.
Any competent Allied commander in WWI should have known that the success of Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars a century earlier had resulted from, respectively, steadfast defence under cover of a reverse slope, and bold skirmishing from covered terrain. The massed attacks engaged in from 1914 to 1918 by France and Britain bore no resemblance what-so-ever to successful Napoleonic tactics and would have had the same lack of success a century earlier as they actually demonstrated.
More post
- 📝 What were the types of currency used in ancient Mesopotamia?
- 📝 What's the relation of FDR and Wilson to War on Terror/terrorism in House of Cards?
- 📝 How did Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof end up on the list of prisoners to be released, by Black September?
- 📝 Is there any speech dialogue on record on Palestine independence day given by the Great Britain Prime minister?
- 📝 What was the difference in the minds of the Romans between human sacrifice and gladiator games?
- 📝 European colonization of India: contrast with America?
- 📝 What is the oldest discovered Neanderthal boat or raft?
- 📝 Is there footage of Valery Legasov's report at the IAEA Conference in Vienna?
- 📝 Where did Hannibal cross the Pyrenees?
- 📝 To what extent were Polynesians in contact with one-another before European contact?
- 📝 Are the English Celts?
- 📝 Why was China not colonized by any country?
- 📝 How do they prove adultery before video/digital evidence was available?
- 📝 What is the reason for: "Risk taking must focus on winning rather than preventing defeat" in US Army Operations guides?
- 📝 What led Guderian as far south as Gomel, in August, 1941?
- 📝 What was Cemetery ridge named for?
- 📝 Why was Apple not able to compete with Microsoft in the home PC market?
- 📝 Is there any documentation of the use of scientific knowledge or technology in pagan temples?
- 📝 Is there any evidence that Cleopatra and Caesarion considered fleeing to India to escape the Romans?
- 📝 Were Rosa Parks and Freedom Riders the first ones to use a bus to protest/change?
- 📝 How did sailing technology improve during the Age of Sail?
- 📝 What impact did Trotsky's armoured train have on the Russian civil war?
- 📝 Did the Nazis ever cite Martin Luther's "The Jews and their lies" to justify the holocaust?
- 📝 Before iron was common, what did common people use for door hinges?
- 📝 Did anyone in Europe predict the existence of the Americas?
- 📝 Could the 1864 US presidential election have been postponed?
- 📝 Were ice buckets used to chill wine in Victorian England?
- 📝 Evidence of Aztecs using Quetzal feathers as commodity money?
- 📝 When and why did it become frowned upon to win a siege by starvation?
- 📝 What is my grandfather's shoulder patch?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 WWI : odds to cross the man's land alive
- 📝 Was there any treaty during WWI and II with the world countries and Sir Henry Dunant's Red Cross to respect those with Red Cross?
- 📝 Why did Columbus cross the mid-Atlantic instead of exploring from Greenland?
- 📝 What led some people to (correctly) believe that there was no land under the ice cap at the North Pole?
- 📝 Where did Hannibal cross the Pyrenees?
- 📝 How long would it take to cross the Channel in 1890's?
- 📝 The WWI Christmas truce of 1914 resulted in no consequences, in spite of clear warnings against such beforehand - why were there no courts-martial?
- 📝 Before the Land Bridge Theory, how was human presence in the Americas explained?
- 📝 How did the KPA cross the Han River on 28 June 1950?
- 📝 Why do land mines seem to be a more serious problem in the Balkans than the Alps?
- 📝 Was it not clear to the WWI allies that they were over-reaching with the treaty of Sevres?
- 📝 Can anyone identify the regiment and rank from this WWI photograph?
- 📝 What was the largest land area that Germany has ever controlled?
- 📝 Did the Weimar governments publish revelatory WWI documents?
- 📝 Was the British Empire bigger than the combined empires of the Iberian Union in terms of claimed land area?
- 📝 What is the earliest mention of an estimate of 71% water (or 70.8%) / 29% land (or 29.2%)?
- 📝 When was the last time a country acquired territory by buying land from another country?
- 📝 What is the meaning of the cross on a Chinese bronze Gu Chalice?
- 📝 Was the Church of St Simeon the Elder at Aleppo built while Simeon was still alive or decades after his death?
- 📝 How strong a land force did Germany need for a conquest of the British Isles in the summer of 1940?
- 📝 Did ancient Germans take pride in leaving the land untouched?
- 📝 Were union disputes the only reason for low female employment in WWI German factories?
- 📝 Did land based airpower give the Americans a decisive advantage at the Battle of Midway?
- 📝 How did the British Army unit size and structure in WWI change from 1915 to 1918?
- 📝 Can anyone explain why the Scottish flag on this map from 1504 has a red cross on a white background?
- 📝 Are these Polish WWI or WW2 uniforms? And any idea on the shorter gentleman's military decoration (cross?) on left shoulder?
- 📝 Which town or village in Britain lost the greatest percentage of men in WWI due to "Pals Battalions"?
- 📝 How did the king give land to new barons without taking it from the old ones?
- 📝 Is (or was) there a version of the Maltese Cross with the right arrowhead missing? Does it have a name?
- 📝 What happened to the cross on the dome of Hagia Sophia?