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Rich Payne · 28-10-2008, 09:03 PM

This question intrigued me and made me realise that I actually had no idea of total British Army casualties. I found a graph here suggesting around 150,000 for 1939 - 1945 :-

First go at a graph of British killed in the Second World War « Trench Fever

Ellis gives a figure of 368,491 evacuated (not just from Dunkirk of course) and I don't know if this includes RAF personnel.

All that can really be construed from this is that even if all the wartime army deaths had been Dunkirk veterans (which clearly wasn't the case) then more than half of them survived.

The BEF evacuation figures of course include many, many, rear echelon troops who would most likely have survived the war as would most of the older men and reservists - many of them would not have gone overseas again.

If the question was restricted to those in infantry battalions in 1940, I fear that the percentage of losses would be much higher. The impression I have is that most battalions who served in other theatres would have lost something between 30% - 60% of their original complement but that is a horrible wild sweeping guess.

28-10-2008, 09:03 PM	#7 (permalink)
Rich Payne Compulsive Tinkerer Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 1,468	This question intrigued me and made me realise that I actually had no idea of total British Army casualties. I found a graph here suggesting around 150,000 for 1939 - 1945 :- First go at a graph of British killed in the Second World War « Trench Fever Ellis gives a figure of 368,491 evacuated (not just from Dunkirk of course) and I don't know if this includes RAF personnel. All that can really be construed from this is that even if all the wartime army deaths had been Dunkirk veterans (which clearly wasn't the case) then more than half of them survived. The BEF evacuation figures of course include many, many, rear echelon troops who would most likely have survived the war as would most of the older men and reservists - many of them would not have gone overseas again. If the question was restricted to those in infantry battalions in 1940, I fear that the percentage of losses would be much higher. The impression I have is that most battalions who served in other theatres would have lost something between 30% - 60% of their original complement but that is a horrible wild sweeping guess.