Many of us are taught in school that during the First World War many men, and there were millions of soldiers who died on many fronts around the world, were killed while fighting bravely and heroically to capture certain strategic points along The Western Front as determined by their commanders. In fact, it was indeed a global conflict fought by men and women around the world on several fronts on land, in the air, under water and upon the seven seas one hundred years ago. Lest we forget.
Typically, we might have heard in our classes that patriotic and eager soldiers - after being recruited and professionally trained to kill - were assigned (finally) to front line, where they hoped to confront and single-handedly defeat in combat any man opposing them, but upon arriving at a trench likely would have been hit by a bomb or a bullet and killed instantly, whereupon relatives to this day can visit their well-groomed graves in France and Belgium. Be assured, vicious battles were fought by men young and old to secure land with the most basic of weapons provided by their various nations who viewed humans as expendable to achieve their goals and so they died, but most did not die instantly.
The rifle, pistol, knife and grenade were among the most commonly used weapons, though most only wounded, effectively putting their target temporarily 'out of action' and onto a stretcher, if lucky. If your number were called and you were to die, however, perhaps a bullet to the head would be the most painless, assuming the bullet entered the skull cleanly and while passing through simply destroyed your brain in an instant. Speaking of dying in a flash, in a fleeting moment, you could also be blown to mist if a big bomb landed atop your head.
In World War One, as technology improved killing efficiently, leaders could select from an almost limitless Pandora's Box of innovative ways for servicemen to die on their fields of battle.
1) The bayonet proved for the unfortunate to be a rather painful and slow death, if done properly, as taught in training schools. Once the bayonet was affixed to the soldier's rifle, and there were several styles of bayonet, which evolved to become a true weapon of terror as the war progressed, the correct method was to not merely insert the blade into the victim's heart and provide a quick death by bleeding out in a matter of moments; no, the soldier was in fact instructed to insert the bayonet into the stomach, twist and pull, which if done correctly would ensure the intestines were wrapped around the blade to be then removed, dropping them in a splash at the the feet of the bewildered enemy, now quite at a loss as to what to do, other than drop his weapon and try to hold his guts from falling out any further.
2) Flying in an airplane or floating in a balloon proved quite dangerous, if you were assigned to the skies in the early days, because leaders believed providing a parachute to their pilots might dampen the spirit and perhaps encourage or enable an early jump from the open-air seat to the safety of the ground below, albeit several thousand feet below. In those early days pilots might in fact have waved to each other in the air, but it was not long before weapons began to accompany pilots on their flights. However, these were not exactly sturdy craft, or well-tested, made from metal, but in fact made of wood and stretched canvas. Bullets tore holes through canvas quite easily and if perchance the engine, propeller or wings were damaged, chances of survival were slim, especially if the plane flipped upside down in mid-air and you fell out, falling those several thousand feet to your death.
3) Contrary to popular opinion, U-boats were not an invention of the Second World War. Submarines lurked under water from the very outset of World War One. Merely two years after the Titanic sank, and within a month of the war's outbreak, one of the first maritime engagements involved the sinking of three British ships (HMS Aboukir, HMS Cressy and HMS Hogue) each torpedoed unsuspectingly by a German submarine prowling nearby, sending over 1,500 sailors to a cold watery grave. In fact, augmenting their vaunted battleships and destroyers, there were many other vulnerable vessels and boats of all sizes deployed for many reasons by Admiralty, such as troop transports, hospital ships, submarine tenders, fleet messengers, armed trawlers and drifters that patrolled coastlines - all of which were sitting ducks on open water for submarines - and after the war were called “the live bait squadron” for their part in enforcing the naval blockade.
4) Other than drowning, freezing, starving or bleeding to death after being torpedoed at sea, or later dying of a bacterial infection or gangrene while in a lifeboat having been rescued, submariners also faced an agonizing and frustrating death if their submarine was hit and crippled (and did not immediately explode, killing all, relatively quickly) and sank to the shallow shelf or seabed several hundred or less feet below, only to asphyxiate by being eventually deprived of air. Asphyxiation in a normal sense might mean death by choking at the hands of another, or by smothering, struggling and desperately fighting to breathe while slowly suffocating. Of course, expediting death in this scenario would involve the presence of smoke, and not from a last cigarette to calm the nerves, but specifically the toxic carbon monoxide from the still-running belching engines that would fill the cabins, mercifully.
5) Unbelievably, a lot of soldiers during the Great War drowned on land in miserable pools of dirty water that filled craters littering the battlefield, typically within "no man's land", falling into them after huge bombs had landed and previously done their damage. Slipping into a pool of water was one concern of charging soldiers during the wet season in Europe, and there were several over the duration of the war along the Western Front, but so was the prospect of sinking helplessly into a quagmire of mud, if wounded. If not discovered and rescued, the soldier could have eventually succumbed to his injuries, suffocated if sinking continuously to below his mouth and nose, eaten by rats the size of cats, or crushed by an advancing tank, if not serendipitously killed by a bomb dropped on the very spot where he lay, stuck, his cries for help unheard among the constant roar of warfare.
6) After or during a battle, or before, being sent to the nearest field hospital or Casualty Clearing Station due to illness, infection or injury bumpily in an ambulance or on the horse-drawn cart was by no means a guarantee of either a return to health or to the soldier's unit either in one piece. Healthcare along the fronts during the war was a tricky affair, as new treatments and technologies were being developed at home and on the front constantly. Amputation by guillotine, for example, was the only option for French doctors who required patients to avoid becoming infected. There were no antibiotics, and blood transfusions were finally successful only near the conclusion of the war. Due to the deplorable conditions in the trenches, it would come as no surprise soldiers' immune systems were weakened and many sick soldiers also filled hospital beds and many from contagious diseases. By May 1915, there were 458 cases of influenza and 992 of gonorrhea reported at the No 1 Canadian General Hospital among both officers and men.
7) Whether being turned to mist or having internal organs turned to Jello by exploding bombs, given a battery of mobile 75mm field guns could sweep ten acres of terrain in less than a minute, many soldiers paid the supreme sacrifice while standing, kneeling, sitting, lying or crouching defensively in a trench waiting for the order to go "over the top", which would be terrifying for any living person. Yet battalions of men, numbering in the many thousands, died in the immediate moments upon being commanded to climb their trench ladders and walk straight into the face of the enemy and their hazardous weaponry, such as machine guns. In the early days of the war, it would be fair to assess the machine gun as primitive; they were heavy and not very portable, unable to support very mobile modern armies. When trenches were dug and armies faced each other mere hundreds of feet away, machine guns became very lethal. On the first day of the Somme offensive, the British found out just how effective German machine guns were, as 60,000 soldiers were mowed down.
8) Capture was living hell. By the time World War I began, the major powers had agreed to the 'laws of war', which included the treatment of prisoners of war, agreeing that each other's prisoners should receive decent treatment. In total, about 8 million soldiers surrendered during the war and ended up as prisoners. Typically, very large army units would surrender en masse. It was rare for individuals to be captured, unless caught cutting barbed wire or over-run serving at a secluded listening post, and the most dangerous moment for any soldier taught "to live and fight another day" was the moment of surrender when helpless, and sometimes defenseless, soldiers were gunned down: killed in action. Many prisoners died of cold and starvation. In Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia in 1915, prisoner of war camps were often unsanitary and that year a severe typhus epidemic broke out which cost the lives of thousands of prisoners. In 1917, Germany kept British and French prisoners on the Western Front in dangerous locations, carrying out forced labour.
9) Many soldiers certainly went off to war with visions of fighting the good fight, of earning a medal or two, of being distinguished and winning the girl of his dreams upon returning home, and the belief by most if not all volunteers bound for Europe in August 1914 was that the war would be over by Christmas. None imagined dying, suffering an injury (minor or life-threatening) or even getting sick in the field, not to mention being horribly disfigured, while serving on behalf of King and Country. Shell shock was first discovered by doctors during the First World War - and dying of shock took on new meaning for soldiers who could not move while under attack. If a soldier was skewered by shrapnel, a piece of flying heated metal from an exploding bomb violently inserted into or through any part of his body, or if a piece of shrapnel quickly and quietly removed part of his body, the soldier was likely to die. It is estimated that of the nearly 10 million military fatalities in WWI fully 60% were caused by shrapnel and most died, in shock, without knowing they had lost limbs.
10) Perhaps the most awkward and awful way to die in the war was due to poison gas. At the second Battle of Ypres, the German army released chlorine gas from pressurized cylinders and thousands of French Algerian troops were smothered in a ghostly green cloud. Without protection, many died from the agonies of suffocation. Although dismissed by commanders as cowardly, both sides used gas, and soldiers who were once at the front in full beards soon shaved fast enough to fit tightly their new gas masks. Whereas chlorine and phosgene gases attacked the lungs, ripping the very breath out of its victims, mustard gas was worse. At least masks provided some defense against the chlorine and phosgene gases, but mustard gas attacked the skin, especially moist armpits and the groin - and the eyes, blinding many. It burned its way into its victim leaving searing blisters and unimaginable pain. Although horrifying and demoralizing, only approximately 4% of all combat deaths were caused by gas attacks, and the Allies mounted more gas attacks than the Germans in 1917 and 1918 because of a marked increase in production of gas, not to mention prevailing west to east wind patterns.
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