WILL HE RETURN FROM THE WAR?
YOUR SOLDIER-BOY'S CHANCES. BETTER TO-DAY THAN PREVIOUS TIMES. Some time ago was published a table showing that the proportion of losses in modern battle, notwithstanding the great increaßa in the efficiency of death-dealing weapons, was not nearly so great as it used to be in times gone by. The calculations of a French General, who is at present at the front, makes out the cost of killing a man to ba between £4OOO and £SOOO. Even in Napoleon's day it took a ton of lead to kill a man. These facts are something to go on when calculating the chances of the soldier-boy's return. It is not so much now a question of the individual soldier. Modern warfare is not a case of man meeting man to kill or be killed.
In the clays of Waterloo the whole idea was to get as near as you could to the enemy and stick the bayonet into him if your musket fire had le f t him alive.
The Romans used to meet hand-to-hand.and the slaughtar was something terrific. The legions killed or maimed each other with the short sword. They only knew that a battle was woe or lost when either themselves or the enemy had no more men left on their feet. The Romans knsw nothing of lyddite, or repeating rifles, or machine guns, or shells that burst and cast a deadly red powder on the faces of the foe, killing them on their feet ua if a blight from heaven had descended upon them. But they exterminated their enemies in a more thorough manner than modern armies, with all those adventitious aids do. At the battle or Naissus the Remans put 100,000 Goths to the swurd, practically annihilating the whole force that took the field against them. So when the soldier of dajs went off to war there Was soma excuse for grave misgivings about his return.. To-day the position is very different. The introduction of science into warfare, while it has made modern fighting in some ways more terrible than ever, has actually diminished the proportion of killed and wounded. Also, the wound 3 made by rifle fire, at all events, are nothing near as dangerous and painful as those made by the eighteenth century musket with their big bore bullets tearing great gaping holes -in the quivering flesh. Modern Burgery and hospital treatment render the proportion that recover from wounds very much greater, as well as shortening the time the wounded men are incapacitated.
During the Duke of Marlborough's campaign the allied armies at the battle of Blenheim consisted of about fifty thousand each. When the night fell the French and Bavarians left twelve thousand dead on the field, besides thirteen thousand of their men prisoners; while the English and Dutch counted their loss at twelve thousand five hundred. This means the appalling percentage of one man killed or wounded of every four en gaged. At Jena the Prussian loss was twenty-one thousand cut of one hundred and five thousand, and the French nineteen thousand out of ninety thousand; a proportion of one in five. At Eylau tha| Russians lost twenty-five thousand out of seventythree thousand; the French thirty thousand out of eighty-five thousand. One in three! At Aspern, the scene of Napoleon's first defeat, the carnage was greater. Out of an army of seventy thousand one-half were left upon the field.
At Borodino in the Moscow campaign the French left fifty thousand dead and wounded out of one hundred and thirty-two thousand engaged, and the Russians forty-five thousand out of the same number. That bloody work was done on a single September day, with the old flint-lock musket, and smooth-bore cannon, aided by sabre and bayonet. The only battle in the latter half of the nineteenth century that can compare with Borodino in slaughter is that of Sadowa in 1886, which ended the Austro Prussian war. Out of four hundred thousand men engaged forty thousand Außtrians and ten thousand Prussians were killed or wounded.
Those are a few of the campaigns of the nineteenth century. Coming to our own times we find the losses all the time getting less and less. The proportion of losses in twentieth century battles varies from onn-four-teenth to ons-twentietb, a noticeable difference. It is no longer considered the duty of a soldier to stand up to the guns and get shot like a man. He is taught to take advantage of every bit. of covrr, and modern generals feel it a disgrace to lose large numbers of men. Only an enemy in a desperate situation and anxious about time will expose men to devastating fire. She business of a smart officer is to get his men into a position wher« they can pepper the enemy without undue risk to themselves.
While millions of men are being engaged in the present war, and the total numbers of killed and wounded must necessarily be large, military experts consider that the proportion will actually be lower than even that in the Boer war, though on the German side enormous losses are being recorded on account of the desperate efforts they are making to maintain their position in France and avoid aeing driven oVor the border as long bs possible.
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King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 732, 23 December 1914, Page 3
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881WILL HE RETURN FROM THE WAR? King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 732, 23 December 1914, Page 3
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