casualty reports

Tom Tulloch-Marshall
Military Genealogy & Operational Records Of The Great War

The British Army 1914 ~ 1919

Tracing "Casualties"

"Killed in action ~ Died of wounds ~ Died ~ Wounded ~ Deserted"

The term "casualty" is often misused, especially by the press and telivision, and even, occasionally, by authors. Probably the most common example of this is with regard to the losses of the British Army on the First of July 1916 when the numbers of men killed and wounded during the opening phase of the Battle of The Somme far exceeded any single days' loss either before or since. The exact number of "casualties" on this day will probably never be established, however the "Official History of The War, Military Operations, France & Belgium, 1916 Volume I" summarises "corrected" statistics (for all ranks) as follows:- killed or died of wounds 19,240 - wounded 35,493 - missing 2,152 - prisoner of war 585. That gives a grand total of 57,470 Officers and Other Ranks as "casualties" for the day, and hence the often quoted approximation of 60,000 which is regularly presented as if it represents the number of men killed on July 1st.

The correct military definition of "casualty" is in fact "loss by wounds, death, desertion, etc", perhaps even broader than might at first have been imagined, but having established what a "casualty" is, how do you go about tracing one, and the date and circumstances under which they became a "casualty" ? There are varying degrees of difficulty:-

CWGC and HMSO ~ killed in action ~ died of wounds ~ "died" ~ deserted ~ wounded, and "other sources"
(Also see the Battalion & Unit War Diaries page)

CWGC and HMSO There are two fundamental sources of information with regard to Officers and Other Ranks who died in service; neither of them goes anywhere near to giving you a detailed view of the man's fate but both provide information which can be essential to further research, especially if a service record or other relevant information is not readily to hand. The HMSO (His Majesty's Stationary Office) lists will give you the date and classification of the man's death (kia, dow, or d) and very often a precise unit attachment if that is not already known. The CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) records will confirm the man's date of death and will tell you where he is buried or commemorated (which in itself can be an important pointer for further research) and they may give you further information regarding unit attachment and such things as next of kin and home address, which is not given in the HMSO lists.
One minor point of common misinterpretation involving the CWGC records is that you should not read anything into their note of the date of the man's death, - it is simply that, the date upon which he died; CWGC do not classify the nature of the man's demise, that must be gleaned from either the HMSO data or a service record if one survives.

killed in action Actually discovering whether an Officer or Other Rank was killed in action is, barring the very occasional error in the official listings, quite a simple matter. He will appear in the HMSO listings of war dead as "kia" and his date of death and unit attachment at the time will be confirmed. Tracing the location and often the circumstances of death then becomes a fairly simple matter (using the relevant war diaries) provided that his precise unit attachment at the time of death can be established .
The HMSO listings are quite adequate in this respect for Infantry and some other branches, however they are generally of no use if the man was in one of the larger conglomerate units such as the Army Service Corps, the Labour Corps, Royal Field Artillery, etc. For men in the latter the CWGC records sometimes provide information additional to the HMSO listings, but that cannot be relied on and it is normally necessary to fall back on the medal records or (more especially) the hope that a service record for the man survives.
Once you move away from research involving Infantry service and get into the more obscure records for the larger units, then the chances of success become disproportionately biased towards Officers, - it's a simple (and probably inevitable) fact that the chances of finding additional records for a Commissioned man are more likely than for the Rank & File.

died of wounds The basic search methods (and likely stumbling blocks) for an Officer or Other Rank who is listed as "died of wounds" are exactly the same as for men who were killed in action. The major difference between these two official classifications of death is in establishing the likely date and location of the action / wounding which led to the man's death, which to a great extent (mainly) depends upon what degree of "immediacy" can reasonably be attributed to the case being examined.
For example, if you have a man who appears in the HMSO listings as having died of wounds, and he turns out to be buried in the UK, then the link between his date of death and the event which led to it is likely to be remote and consequently unresearchable, unless you have the good fortune to find that a service record for the man survives and that service record contains reference to the date upon which the man was wounded. Once again, the likely success rate is much higher for Officers than it is for OR's.
On the other hand there are often factors which can guide you towards a conclusion that the man's death and the event leading to it were much more closely linked. The classification "died of wounds" does not by any means imply that there was any great delay between the man's having been wounded and his demise. On the contrary, experience shows that a death leading to a "Dow" classification could occur very quickly after the event, half a day or less is far from uncommon. Much depends here on factors such as the man's place of burial or commemoration, - such things often point to the likelihood of how far he had been removed from the front before his death occurred, and although it is rarely possible to be precisely certain in these cases it is often possible to make a reasonable case with regard to the circumstances of death once the relevant war diaries have been examined. Each case has to be examined on it's merits.

"died" (natural causes) The third major classification of death which appears in the HMSO lists is "died", this appearing in the printed versions of the lists as "d". This notation means that the man died of natural causes and did not fall into either the kia or dow classifications. A fairly high proportion of these men will be found to have burials in the UK, and investigations into their deaths will fall outside of the research which I undertake.
Research of the military service of these men may still be possible depending on the information revealed by their medal records and more especially any service record which may survive. Again, the likelihood of success will inevitably be higher in the case of an Officer, but it is impossible to predict how much information may be available about such a man until the initial investigations are made.

deserted The fact that an Officer or Other Rank deserted is normally revealed in his medal records, with supplementary information to be found in any surviving service record. Further minor information may be available in the Judge Advocates records, but that is very time-consuming to research and the additional value of material to be found there is dubious.

wounded, and "other sources" Establishing records of woundings is an area where the difference between records relating to Officers and those relating to Other Ranks can be dramatic in the extreme. Apart from the fact that you stand a much better chance of a service record for an Officer being available (and such records normally containing the notes of any Medical Boards which the Officer has attended), it is also quite normal for war diaries to contain referenced to Officers by name in the event of their being killed or wounded, going on or returning from leave, hospital admissions, etc., etc., whereas such mentions for Other Ranks are rare in the extreme. (But not unknown - there are quite a few notable exceptions such as the war diaries of 13th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment during 1916, where monthly typed lists show men wounded, killed, missing etc on a day-by-day basis. Names, initials, regimental numbers and the nature of the casualty are listed. The diaries of 9th Bn East Surrey Regiment contain similar lists - especially detailed for September 1916).

For Other Ranks you are really left reliant upon the following possible sources:- a surviving service record; - a regimental record (see "Regimental Records" in the main British Army 1914-19 index); - the record of award of the Silver War Badge, with some relevant date which allows some deduction; - family recollections or some surviving personal written record; - or "other sources".

There are various possibilities here; none of them "easy" or quick. One in particular deserves mention, although it is really only relevant to casualties occurring between about the middle of 1917 and early 1919, and it has to be said that it is one of the most dreadful pieces of archive material to have to deal with, - awkward to access (it is not a PRO item), unindexed, and potentially time-consuming in the extreme - "The War Office Weekly Casualty Lists".
The title itself is a bit of a misnomer because these lists are in fact daily lists which were bound together into "weekly lists", many of which are extremely volumous. Each daily list is sub-divided into lists for Officers and OR's, then sub-divided again for Regiment or Corps in Order of Precedence, then again sub-divided into individual lists covering classifications of "casualty" which range from the fairly obvious "killed in action" and "wounded", and then by various deviations through "missing", "missing believed killed", and on into such obscure areas as "previously reported wounded and missing, now reported wounded and not missing" (etc).
This apparently boundless ability of the War Office mandarins to produce a series of records the convolutions of which almost defies belief, coupled with type-setting in what looks like six-point, with ill-defined separation between the sub-lists, coupled with the sheer volume of the thing, makes this source a nightmare to deal with. It may however become of necessity the last port of call if there is determination to pursue the search for a casualty to the bounds of possibility. (Such as my grandfather for example - he appears on page twelve of the daily list for 19th December 1917, part of the weekly list dated 24th December 1917. That information, in conjunction with his battalion's war diaries, allowed his date of wounding to be tied-down to two consecutive dates).

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CWGC and HMSO	There are two fundamental sources of information with regard to Officers and Other Ranks who died in service; neither of them goes anywhere near to giving you a detailed view of the man's fate but both provide information which can be essential to further research, especially if a service record or other relevant information is not readily to hand. The HMSO (His Majesty's Stationary Office) lists will give you the date and classification of the man's death (kia, dow, or d) and very often a precise unit attachment if that is not already known. The CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) records will confirm the man's date of death and will tell you where he is buried or commemorated (which in itself can be an important pointer for further research) and they may give you further information regarding unit attachment and such things as next of kin and home address, which is not given in the HMSO lists. One minor point of common misinterpretation involving the CWGC records is that you should not read anything into their note of the date of the man's death, - it is simply that, the date upon which he died; CWGC do not classify the nature of the man's demise, that must be gleaned from either the HMSO data or a service record if one survives.
killed in action	Actually discovering whether an Officer or Other Rank was killed in action is, barring the very occasional error in the official listings, quite a simple matter. He will appear in the HMSO listings of war dead as "kia" and his date of death and unit attachment at the time will be confirmed. Tracing the location and often the circumstances of death then becomes a fairly simple matter (using the relevant war diaries) provided that his precise unit attachment at the time of death can be established . The HMSO listings are quite adequate in this respect for Infantry and some other branches, however they are generally of no use if the man was in one of the larger conglomerate units such as the Army Service Corps, the Labour Corps, Royal Field Artillery, etc. For men in the latter the CWGC records sometimes provide information additional to the HMSO listings, but that cannot be relied on and it is normally necessary to fall back on the medal records or (more especially) the hope that a service record for the man survives. Once you move away from research involving Infantry service and get into the more obscure records for the larger units, then the chances of success become disproportionately biased towards Officers, - it's a simple (and probably inevitable) fact that the chances of finding additional records for a Commissioned man are more likely than for the Rank & File.
died of wounds	The basic search methods (and likely stumbling blocks) for an Officer or Other Rank who is listed as "died of wounds" are exactly the same as for men who were killed in action. The major difference between these two official classifications of death is in establishing the likely date and location of the action / wounding which led to the man's death, which to a great extent (mainly) depends upon what degree of "immediacy" can reasonably be attributed to the case being examined. For example, if you have a man who appears in the HMSO listings as having died of wounds, and he turns out to be buried in the UK, then the link between his date of death and the event which led to it is likely to be remote and consequently unresearchable, unless you have the good fortune to find that a service record for the man survives and that service record contains reference to the date upon which the man was wounded. Once again, the likely success rate is much higher for Officers than it is for OR's. On the other hand there are often factors which can guide you towards a conclusion that the man's death and the event leading to it were much more closely linked. The classification "died of wounds" does not by any means imply that there was any great delay between the man's having been wounded and his demise. On the contrary, experience shows that a death leading to a "Dow" classification could occur very quickly after the event, half a day or less is far from uncommon. Much depends here on factors such as the man's place of burial or commemoration, - such things often point to the likelihood of how far he had been removed from the front before his death occurred, and although it is rarely possible to be precisely certain in these cases it is often possible to make a reasonable case with regard to the circumstances of death once the relevant war diaries have been examined. Each case has to be examined on it's merits.
"died" (natural causes)	The third major classification of death which appears in the HMSO lists is "died", this appearing in the printed versions of the lists as "d". This notation means that the man died of natural causes and did not fall into either the kia or dow classifications. A fairly high proportion of these men will be found to have burials in the UK, and investigations into their deaths will fall outside of the research which I undertake. Research of the military service of these men may still be possible depending on the information revealed by their medal records and more especially any service record which may survive. Again, the likelihood of success will inevitably be higher in the case of an Officer, but it is impossible to predict how much information may be available about such a man until the initial investigations are made.
deserted	The fact that an Officer or Other Rank deserted is normally revealed in his medal records, with supplementary information to be found in any surviving service record. Further minor information may be available in the Judge Advocates records, but that is very time-consuming to research and the additional value of material to be found there is dubious.
wounded, and "other sources"	Establishing records of woundings is an area where the difference between records relating to Officers and those relating to Other Ranks can be dramatic in the extreme. Apart from the fact that you stand a much better chance of a service record for an Officer being available (and such records normally containing the notes of any Medical Boards which the Officer has attended), it is also quite normal for war diaries to contain referenced to Officers by name in the event of their being killed or wounded, going on or returning from leave, hospital admissions, etc., etc., whereas such mentions for Other Ranks are rare in the extreme. (But not unknown - there are quite a few notable exceptions such as the war diaries of 13th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment during 1916, where monthly typed lists show men wounded, killed, missing etc on a day-by-day basis. Names, initials, regimental numbers and the nature of the casualty are listed. The diaries of 9th Bn East Surrey Regiment contain similar lists - especially detailed for September 1916).