100 Facts about WW 1
1. During World War One, 230 soldiers perished for each hour of the four and a quarter years it continued.
2. WWI is only the sixth deadliest conflict in world history.
3. Nearly 2/3 of military deaths in WWI were in battle. In previous conflicts, most deaths were due to disease.
4. New Zealand had one of the highest casualty per capita (wounded and dead) rates in WW1, at 58%.
5. After WWI, Britain’s leadership in the world economy was gone forever. It had huge debts, high unemployment, and slow growth. France suffered as well. Most of the loans it had made to czarist Russia were never repaid, inflation was rampant, and large parts of the country were ruined.
6. In 1914, 600 Paris taxis were used to ferry troops to the front line on the Marne when the Germans were only 20 miles from the French capital. The Allied effort halted the German advance.
7. In August 1914, Andorra declared war on Germany. With no standing army and no navy, it wasn’t exactly an overwhelming force. At the time, the military of Andorra consisted of 10 part-time solders wielding ceremonial blank cartridges.
8. Andorra was also one of the last to declare the war over. With their demands left out of the Treaty of Versailles process, Andorra remained in a state of war with Germany until the start of World War II, some 25 years later.
9. WW1 nearly caused a financial meltdown in Britain. For example, the cost of bullets fired in one 24 hour period in September 1918 was nearly £4 million. By 1918 Britain was spending £6 million a day on the war.
10. The biggest naval battle in history occurred off the coast of Jutland in the afternoon of May 31, 1916. More than 200 warships and 100,000 men of the rival navies were involved. The British "Grand Fleet" lost 14 ships. The German "High Seas Fleet" lost 11 ships.
11. It was crucial to protect the merchant ships carrying the food and military supplies to the front from enemy torpedoes. Norman Wilkinson, an artist and Royal Navy volunteer came up with the idea of covering ships in bold shapes and violent contrasts of colour. The complete opposite of normal camouflage, dazzle camouflage was supposed to confuse the enemy rather than conceal the ships.
12. For the span of WWI, from 1914-1918, 274 German U-boats sank 6,596 ships. The five most successful U-boats were U-35 (sank 224 ships), U-39 (154 ships), U-38 (137 ships), U-34 (121 ships), and U-33 (84 ships). Most of these were sunk near the coast, particularly in the English Channel.
13. The ocean liner Olympic, sister ship to Titanic, became the only merchant vessel in WWI to sink an enemy warship when she rammed U-boat U-103.
14. The British armed merchant cruiser RMS Carmania engaged and sank the German merchant cruiser SMS Cap Trafalgar. Ironically, the two ships had been disguised as each other.
15. Karl von Müller, Captain of the German WWI vessel the SMS Emden allowed the passengers of the enemy merchant ships enough time to gather their belongings and abandon the ship before sinking it.
16. During the war, steel was becoming scarce. President Woodrow Wilson approved the construction of 24 concrete ships. Of the 24, only 12 were built, at a total cost of $50 million. By the time the ships were completed, the war had already ended.
17. As another result of metal scarce, corsets began to fade and bras became popular.
18. "Little Willie" was the first prototype tank in WWI. Built in 1915, it carried a crew of three and could travel as fast as 3 mph (4.8 km/h). Tanks were initially called "landships". However, in an attempt to disguise them as water storage tanks rather than as weapons, the British decided to code name them "tanks". Landship Tanks were first used during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette (1916). British tanks were initially categorized into "males" and "females." Male tanks had cannons, while females had heavy machine guns.
19. Pilots were allowed to fly for fun during their time off.
20. There was an odd camaraderie and chivalry among aviators from both sides. When a pilot from either side went down behind enemy lines, the "enemy" would drop a note to inform his comrades whether he had been killed in a crash or taken prisoner. When a renowned pilot died, his erstwhile adversaries would drop a wreath and note of condolence over his airfield.
21. Royal Flying Corps (RFC) pilot training was often cursory, especially in the early days of the war. Many recruits had only 2 to 3 hours of flying instruction before being expected to fly solo. Men were often sent to France having logged only 15 hours in the air. 8000 young men died in Britain during flight training, which means that more died from accidents and equipment failures than from enemy action.
22. Royal Flying Corps (RFC) pilots were not allowed to use parachutes because parachutes were considered cowardly, although the men who were up in observation balloons had them and often used them to escape an attack. Towards the end of the war, German pilots were using parachutes.
23. There were some women aviators before and during the Great War. A few taught fighter pilots, while a very few Russian women and one Belgian actually flew in combat missions.
24. French aviatrix Marie Marvingt was the first woman in the world to fly combat missions. She initially disguised herself as a man and joined the infantry. Once outed as woman, she was removed from the front and volunteered with the air force, flying bombing routes over Germany. Eugenie Mikhailovna Shakhovskaya from Russia was the first female military pilot in 1914, flying reconnaisance missions.
25. WW1 planes used Castor Oil as engine lubricant and the Pilots suffered from persistent diarrhea due to inhaling unburnt castor oil coming out of the exhaust.
26. Officer POWs in Germany were able to take walks outside their camps if they gave their parole - i.e. their written word that they would not try to escape. Some would go into villages and shop, one chap stocking up on goods for his eventual escape from the prison - but not while he was on parole!
27. POWs in Germany were sent to neutral Switzerland or Holland during the latter years of the war if they were ill or had problems with their nerves after prolonged imprisonment. By the end of the war, 40,000 British and Commonwealth troops were interned in Holland alone. Once there, they could live in hotels if they could afford it, and officers could have their wives join them. Other ranks were allowed visits from family members or sweethearts. Canadian officers had a clubhouse on the seafront in Scheveningen in Holland where booze was cheap. The Canadians had a baseball team and often played against the American Legation in the nearby Hague. Some men got paying jobs and fell in love with local girls. But they weren't allowed to leave the country, and Britain would have been obliged to send them back had they tried. However, if a prisoner managed to escape from Germany to a neutral country, he could go home.
28. In May, 1917, about half the French army mutinied. The French had had over a million deaths so far, and had just been decimated in another disastrous offensive. Over 20,000 troops deserted outright; others refused to obey orders. There was a lot of secrecy around the mutiny, but records show that over 500 men were sentenced to death, although fewer than 50 were actually executed. The Commander-in-Chief, General Nivelle, was sacked, reforms were made, and more leaves were granted, which restored order to the French army.
29. In the early years of the war, Canadian women had to give their husbands written permission to join up.
30. Many young men faked their age in order to sign up early. The youngest to do so was Sidney Lewis, who was only 12 years old at the time, and one of the 250,000 underage British soldiers who fought in the war. Some were motivated by patriotism, but for others it was an escape from their dreary lives. Officially a British soldier had to be 19 years old to serve.
31. British air raid casualties totaled 1,414 killed and 3,416 injured. Ironically, of those, 24 were killed and 196 injured by British anti-aircraft fire.
32. During air raids, London policemen rode about on bicycles or in cars with placards announcing that people should take cover. Boy scouts bugled the "All Clear" when the raids were over.
33. The concussion from shell blasts could stop a man's heart or rupture internal organs, so that he died with no obvious external trauma.
34. Women handed white feathers to men they thought were shirking their responsibilities by not going to war. But men not in uniform - for many reasons - were also doing important war work on the home front. In Britain there were approximately 16,000 conscientious objectors who refused to fight during the war.
35. Soldiers were given wound stripes on their uniforms - considered a badge of honour. Some had more than one.
36. Some women of the FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) brought their own cars to France, which were then converted into ambulances. The windshields were removed from all vehicles, and only small sidelights were allowed for night driving. This was so as not to alert enemy aircraft with lights or reflections, and to prevent injuries from breaking glass during bombings. The girls (as they called themselves) often had to evacuate the wounded from trains to hospitals or ships at night and in all weathers. FANY members earned 136 medals and decorations during WW1.
37. Fully trained Canadian Nursing Sisters who joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC) were given the rank of Lieutenant. The British Sisters had no rank.
38. Many of the hospitals in France and Belgium, including those well behind the lines on the French coast, housed the wounded (and staff) in tents. Camps could be the size of a small town. The winters of 1916-17 and 1917-18 were among the coldest in living memory, so it was miserable as well as difficult for staff and patients alike. These tents were occasionally blown down in storms, which were all too frequent on that windy coast. Three hospitals were virtually leveled to the ground in a gale on Aug. 28, 1917.
39. WWI saw many women join the working forces. The so-called 'canaries' were women who worked with TNT, which gave them toxic jaundice and turned their skin yellow.
40. If one of the troops fell ill while his company was marching, the Medical Officer would put a tag on him with a diagnosis, and leave the man by the side of the road to be picked up by a passing ambulance. Without the signed note, the man would have been considered a deserter.
41. Shell-shocked soldiers were often considered cowards or malingerers. One doctor said that shell-shock was a "manifestation of childishness and femininity". Treatment included electro-shock therapy, hot and cold baths, massage, daily marches, athletic activities, and sometimes hypnosis. Shell-shocked officers were said to have neurasthenia while the men (usually from the "lower classes") were classified as hysterics. In 1917, the term shell-shock was no longer allowed. Men were classified as Not Yet Diagnosed Nervous (NYDN). The men called it Not Yet Dead Nearly.
42. The war left thousands of soldiers disfigured and disabled. Reconstructive surgery was used to repair facial damage, but masks were also used to cover the most horrific disfigurement. Some soldiers stayed in nursing homes their entire lives. Harold Gillies, an Englisg doctor, established the field of plastic surgery, pioneering the first attempts of facial reconstruction.
43. The British Army began the routine use of blood transfusion in treating wounded soldiers. Blood was transferred directly from one person to another. A US Army doctor, Captain Oswald Robertson, established the first blood bank on the Western Front in 1917, using sodium citrate to prevent the blood from coagulating and becoming unusable. Blood was kept on ice for up to 28 days and then transported to casualty clearing stations for use in life-saving surgery where it was needed most.
44. Edith Cavell (1865- October 12 1915) was a British nurse who saved soldiers from all sides. When she helped 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium, the Germans arrested her and she was executed by a German firing squad. Her death helped turn global opinion against Germany.
45. WWI helped bring about the emancipation of women. Women took over many traditionally male jobs and showed that they could perform them just as well as men. In 1918, most women over the age of 30 were given the vote in the British parliamentary elections. Two years later, the 19th amendment granted American women the vote.
46. The Italian Front 1915-1918 was the site of the largest scale mountain warfare in history. In 1916 in the Italian Alps a winter avalanche killed 10,000 men. In four years of conflict on the Italian Alpine Front 50,000 soldiers killed by avalanches. 60,000 Alpine troops would freeze to death.
47. During the course of the Great War 11% of Frances's entire population was killed or wounded.
48. The Original Pooh Bear was a Canadian World War One Mascot.
49. The prominent war recruitment poster 'Your Country Needs You' famously featured Lord Kitchener with a pointing finger. Kitchener himself was killed when the ship he was on struck a German mine in 1916.
50. The following words were first used in the trenches of WWI, and are still used today: Over the Top, Trench Coat, Ace, Dogfight, Buddy, Pushing up the Daisies, Red Tape, Zoom, Sniper, Washout, Cootie, Tune Up, In the Pink, Zero Hour, Zoom, Busted , Guy Ticked Off, Put a Sock in it, Hit the Deck, Washout, Rookie, Coffin nail, Seconds, Fed Up, Rise & Shine, Pipe down, Mess up, Get knocked off, Hike, Gadget, Kick the Bucket, Rank & File, Chow Down, Bull, Cushy, Scrounge, Shot (inoculation), Humdinger, Missed the Bus, Basket Case
51. In 1917-1918, French authorities secretly built a life-size replica of Paris in the northern outskirts to trick German bombers into destroying the dummy city rather than the real one. Faux Paris came complete with street lamps, an Arc de Triomphe, a Champs Elysées, Gard du Nord, Gard de l’Est and even a fake moving train. The fake city, built 15 miles outside of Paris along the River Seine, was never put to use; German bombing raids ended before it was completed.
52. Artillery barrage and mines created immense noise. On June 7, 1917, explosives blowing up beneath the German lines on Messines Ridge at Ypres in Belgium could be heard in London 140 miles (220 km) away. About 10,000 German soldiers died instantly in the blast. In 1955 a lightning strike set off one of the original 21 mines at the Messines Ridge, killing a cow. (Only 18 of the mines exploded in 1917). Two of the unexploded mines are still missing.
53. Big Bertha was a 48-ton howitzer used by the Germans in WWI. It was named after the wife of its designer Gustav Krupp. It could fire a 2,050-lb (930 kg) shell a distance of 9.3 miles (15 km). However, it took a crew of 200 men six hours or more to assemble. Germany had 13 of these huge guns or "wonder weapons."
54. Germans were the first to use flamethrowers in WWI. Their flamethrowers could fire jets of flame as far as 130 feet (40 m).
55. Night combat was made somewhat easier by the British invention of tracer bullets—rounds which emitted small amounts of flammable material that left a phosphorescent trail. The first attempt, in 1915, wasn’t actually that useful, but the second tracer model developed in 1916, was a real hit (no pun intented). Its popularity was due in part to an unexpected side-benefit: the flammable agent could ignite hydrogen, which made it perfect for "balloon-busting" the German zeppelins then terrorizing England.
56. WWI introduced the widespread use of the machine gun, a weapon Hiram Maxim patented in the U.S. in 1884. The Maxim weighed about 100 pounds and was water cooled. It could fire about 450-600 rounds per minute. Most machine guns used in WWI were based on the Maxim design.
57. In the US, suspicion of the Germans was so high that even German shepherd dogs were killed. The names of frankfurters, hamburgers, sauerkraut and dachshunds were all changed to American names (Liberty sausages, Salibury steak, Liberty Cabbage, Liberty dogs). German stopped being taught in schools and German-language books were banned and burned. Before the war, it had been the second most widely spoken language in the US.
58. Herbert Hoover, who would become president in 1929, was appointed U.S. Food Administrator. His job was to provide food to the U.S. army and its allies. He encouraged people to plant "Victory Gardens," or personal gardens. More than 20 million Americans planted their own gardens, and food consumption in the U.S decreased by 15%.
59. In 1917 food shortages in Britain caused by the loss of British shipping to German U-boats meant the government banned the use of rice at weddings and the feeding of pigeons.
60. Even though the U.S. government didn’t grant Native Americans citizenship until 1924, nearly 13,000 of them served in WWI.
61. The Germans were skilled at intercepting and solving Allied codes. Germans also captured one out of four paper messengers. However, when a U.S. commander used Choctaw tribe members form the Oklahoma National Guard unit, they used an extremely complex language that the Germans could not translate. The eight Choctaw men and others who joined them became known as the Choctaw Code Talkers.
62. More than 200,000 African Americans served in WWI, but only about 11 percent of them were in combat forces. The rest were put in labor units, loading cargo, building roads, and digging ditches. They served in segregated divisions (the 92nd and 93rd) and trained separately. WWI helped bring about the emancipation of African Americans. For example, Henry Ford recruited black people from the South to work in his factories. The migration of African Americans from the South to the North during WWI was one of the most significant population shifts in the 20th century.
63. The Harlem Hell Fighters were one of the few African American units that saw the front lines. For their extraordinary acts of heroism, the soldiers received the French Croix de Guerre, a medal awarded to soldiers from Allied countries for bravery in combat. However, in the U.S their deeds were largely ignored.
64. The trench network of World War I stretched approximately 25,000 miles (40,200 km) from the English Channel to Switzerland. The area was known as the Western Front. British poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote, "When all is done and said, the war was mainly a matter of holes and ditches."
65. German trenches were in stark contrast to British trenches. German trenches were built to last and included bunk beds, furniture, cupboards, water tanks with faucets, electric lights, and doorbells.
66. Average life expectancy in the trenches was about six weeks. Junior officers and stretcher bearers were some of the people most at risk.
67. 75 metres was the average advance made by the British army during the Third Battle of Ypres in the six months from June to December 1917. That's less than 0.5m a day.
68. During the fourth battle of Ypres the Portuguese soldier Aníbal Augusto Milhais defeated, almost single handedly, two German assaults by laying down intense fire and managed to cover the retreat of Portuguese and Scots alike despite coming under heavy attack himself. For three days without water and food he convinced the German soldiers they were up against a fortified unit rather than just a single Portuguese soldier. A month later he repeated the heroic act garuanteeing a Belgian unit safe retreat.
69. France, not Germany, was the first country to use gas against enemy troops in WWI. In August 1914, they fired the first tear gas grenades (xylyl bromide) against the Germans. In January 1915, Germany first used tear gas against Russian armies, but the gas turned to liquid in the cold air. In April 1915, the Germans were the first to use poisonous chlorine gas.
70. During WWI, the Germans released about 68,000 tons of gas, and the British and French released 51,000 tons. In total, 1,200,000 soldiers on both sides were gassed, of which 91,198 died horrible deaths.
71. Approximately 30 different poisonous gases were used during WWI. Initially the only protection against gas attacks was a cloth soaked in a soldier's own urine. By 1918, gas masks with filter respirators usually provided effective protection. At the end of the war, many countries signed treaties outlawing chemical weapons.
72. In 1915 the Russians defending Osowiec Fortress, were attacked by Germans using poisoned gases. Fourteen German battalions (at least 7000 infantry men) started advancing thinking the defenders were dead, but were counter-attacked by the remaining survivors (about 60 men). The surprise attack and bloody clothing (Russian soldiers were coughing blood up because of poison gases destroying the lung tissue) put Germans in the state of shock and made them run. In European papers this was later dubbed "The attack of the dead men".
73. The worst toll for a single day in military history occurred during the Battle of the Somme. The British suffered 60,000 casualties in one day, 20,000 dead. Allied forces only advanced six miles.
74. The site of the Battle of Verdun is remembered as the battlefield with the highest density of dead per square yard.
75. The Battle of Haelen or Halen, also known as the Battle of the Silver Helmets was a cavalry battle at the beginning of World War I. On August 12, 1914 Belgian troops would gain a tactical victory over German forces in what is known as the last cavalry battle in modern warfare.
76. Albert I, the King of Belgium, fought alongside his troops and his wife, Queen Elisabeth, worked as a nurse at the front.
77. A handful of journalists risked their lives to report on the realities of war. As the Government sought to control the flow of information from the frontline at the start of the war, journalists were banned. Reporting on the conflict was, in the opinion of the War Office, helping the enemy. If caught, they faced the death penalty.
78. 12 million letters were delivered to the front every week. Astonishingly, it only took two days for a letter from Britain to reach the front in France. The journey began at a purpose-built sorting depot in Regent's Park before being shipped to the trenches. By the end of the war, two billion letters and 114 million parcels had had been delivered.
79. The rate of venereal disease (VD) among Canadian troops was almost 6 times higher than that of the British troops, and was 1 in every 9 men.
80. Half of the dead of The Great War have no known grave.
81. Officers carried revolvers, not rifles. They were easy for the enemy to spot and therefore killed in larger proportions than their men.
82. Officers had a "batman" - a military servant - to look after them and their equipment.
83. During WWI, a Hungarian soldier named Paul Kern was shot in the frontal lobe, resulting in him being unable to fall asleep. Doctors declared he was doomed to an early death, but he lived for decades after that. No one really knows how.
84. Germany made tires for bicycles out of metal springs after WW1 because there was no more rubber available
85. The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 is thought to have killed from 30 to 100 million people worldwide. Many of those who survived had life-long health problems. Ironically, as if youth hadn't sacrificed and suffered enough, this virulent Spanish Flu killed a disproportionate number of people in their 20s and 30s. Pregnant women had the highest death rates - from 23% to 71%.
86. Following World War I, large numbers of ex-soldiers from Australia, along with a number of British veterans, took up farming within Western Australia. Seeing their crops destroyed by vast amount of emus, led to "The Great Emu war" in 1932 where they tried to kill the emus with machine guns. The emus mostly won.
87. In 1964, the German government decided to pay back East African soldiers (Askari) that had fought for them in WWI. Most of them had no proof of service, so they had to perform the Manual of arms in German (handling and using weapons in formation) with a broom to prove themselves. Not a single one of them failed and did it perfectly
88. Hugh Lofting, not wishing to write his children about the horrors of trench warfare in WWI, instead wrote them imaginative letters that later became the Dr. Doolittle Stories.
89. The most decorated American of WWI was Alvin Cullum York (1887-1964). York led an attack on a German gun nest, taking 32 machine guns, killing 28 German soldiers, and capturing 132 more. He returned home with a Medal of Honor, a promotion to Sergeant, the French Croix de Guerre, and a gift of 400 acres of good farmland.
90. Safety Razors were invented in the late 18th century, but weren’t popularized until World War 1. During World War I, Gillette worked out a deal with the U.S. Armed Forces to provide Gillette safety razors and blades to every enlisted man or officer on his way to Europe as part of his standard-issue gear.
91. During WW1 British intelligence used semen as invisible ink.
92. Brushing teeth was not a regular practice among Americans before WW1. "So many recruits had rotting teeth the officials said poor dental hygiene was a national security risk."
93. A South African monkey served in the 3rd South African Infantry Brigade for three years at the frontlines in WW1, eventually being awarded the Pretoria Citizen’s Service Medal upon his return home.
94. Dogs were used as messengers and carried orders to the front lines in capsules attached to their bodies. Dogs were also used to lay down telegraph wires.
95. At the height of the war the British Army had 870,000 horses. Dead ones were melted down for fat which was later used for making explosives.
96. More than 500,000 pigeons carried messages between headquarters and the front lines. Groups of pigeons trained to return to the front lines were dropped into occupied areas by parachutes and kept there until soldiers had messages to send back.
97. The armistice was signed just after 5 a.m. (Paris time) the morning of Nov. 11. The fighting was to officially end at 11 a.m. The German delegation had requested an immediate cease-fire, but the Allies set a six-hour deadline so that all commanders could get the word. When they heard the news, some commanders had their men stand down. But others continued to attack — especially some American commanders — who saw chances for "glory" or promotion slipping away, or because they thought the Germans needed to be flat-out beaten. Several thousand men on both sides were killed or wounded in the final six hours of the war.
98. One American artillery captain kept his battery firing at the Germans until just minutes before 11 a.m., because he believed the armistice was premature and the Germans needed to be truly beaten, not just defeated. His name? Capt. Harry S. Truman.
99. Historians generally (but not totally) list a German soldier by the name of Lt. Tomas with being the final German casualty. He was killed after the 11th hour by an American unit that apparently hadn’t received word of the cease-fire. The final German killed before the 11th hour is not known. According to generally accepted records, the last British, Canadian, French and American men killed were the following: British soldier George Edwin Ellison died around 9:30 a.m. while scouting around Mons. French soldier Augustin Trébuchon was killed at 10:45 a.m. while spreading the news that they would get hot soup after the 11th hour. Canadian soldier George Lawrence Price died two minutes before the 11th hour, just north of Mons. The last man believed killed in the Great War was American soldier Henry Gunther, 60 seconds before the 11th hour. German soldiers were shouting and waving at Gunther and the others to go back.
100. Germany finally paid off all of its World War 1 debt in 2010.
