The Great War- some facts and figures

1. The 'Great War' was a shorthand for ‘The Great War for Civilisation’.

​

2. By the end of November 1914 France had lost 454,000 dead, one third of their entire war’s total.

3. On 1st July 1916, the first day of The Battle of the Somme, the British Army lost 20,000 men killed and a further 37,646 were reported as either wounded or missing.

​

4. One out of every 5 British soldiers who served on the Western Front was killed and a further 2 were injured.

​

5. 9,000 men from the fishing industry volunteered for the Royal Naval Reserve from the Humber area alone, adding 880 of their vessels to the fleet.

​

6. By the end of the war the German navy had laid a total of 25,000 mines in 1,360 minefields within British waters. This led to the reported loss of 46 Royal Navy Warships, 269 Merchant Ships, and 63 fishing vessels, a combined total of over 1 million tons of allied shipping.

​

7. 11% of the entire French population was either killed or wounded in WW1.

​

8. Ten years after the war nearly 2.5 million British men were in receipt of a disability pension for injuries received during the war.

​

9. French General Ferdinand Foch said this of the Treaty of Versailles: "This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years."