Great War

[Darman]

So I've applied for a part time teaching position: teach one class of high school students a week.  The topic is military history: World War One for the first semester and The American Civil War for the second semester. 

One of my goals (if I got the job) would be to impress upon these kids the magnitude of the two wars.  And my thought was to give each kid a card with the name of a soldier (all made up names of course: British for WW1 and Yankee/Northern for ACW) and as the class goes on and we discus the timelines of the two wars I'll mention that Private Willie MacBride enlisted in August 1914.  And then when the time for the Battle of the Somme (Kitchener's armies) Private Willie MacBride dies at the battle of the Somme, one of 400,000+ British casualties.  theoretically, by the end of each war, the kids left "alive" and "unscathed" will be few.  I just finished reading Drew Gilpin Faust's "This Republic of Suffering" where she discusses how American's idea of death changed.  How the idea of a "Good Death" influenced many of the soldiers who died in the way they died, and also in the way their comrades remembered them dying (mostly through letters home). 

Any thoughts on this?  Honestly, teaching in a classroom would be brand new to me and its kinda intimidating (and I don't even have the job yet). 

[miketr]

Interesting concept but to keep things lining up with actual events you should check the historic causality counts for various nations.

For example in WW1 the USA had just under 5 million enlist and 100K killed while the UK had 8.8 million serve with over 800K KIA. 

So 10% KIA for the UK BUT it had twice as many wounded at 1.6 million.  So KIA and wounded are 30% of total force.

Different nationals dealt with the losses in different ways.  In the UK every village and town has a WW1 war memorial with lists of people killed.  You can find such memorials in the USA for the ACW.  Also post war saw interesting literature come out. 

I wish you well.

Michael

[Darman]

8.8 million includes non-British Isles (i.e. Commonwealth and Imperial) troops.  Approximately 5.5 million Brits were of military age and about 1.5 million were in essential war industries. 

My original thought was to directly connect the high school students I'd be teaching with the "public school" students of Britain.  Being of the officer class, public schools suffered a disproportionate number of casualties (something I'd bring up and ask my students why they think that is).  However, I am having trouble finding statistics for public school students in 1914 versus public school casualties. 

So far the research I've done has yielded a list of British recruits (volunteers through about 1916, conscripts after that) on a month by month basis.  I'd love to find a listing of casualties on a month to month basis.  Or even battle to battle basis (Which I can by hand, certainly, but I'd love a table already made). 

[miketr]

If you are looking for UK data best option is.

Statistics of the military effort of the British Empire during the great war, 1914-1920

There are some PDF copies up on the web as its fallen into the public domain.

Michael