re: Would you rather have gone “over the top” in WWI or been on the first wave on D-Day?

U.S. casualty figures for WWI

quote:

---

For the combined Army, Navy and Marine forces of 4.7 million (Army of 4.1 million and a Navy of 600,000), the U.S. Department of Defense official figures for the period from 1 April 1917 to 31 December 1918 stand at 116,516 deaths.[3] This includes 479 soldiers and 675 members of the Navy and the Marine Corps lost at sea.[4] The U.S. Coast Guard lost an additional 192 men.[5] Fully two-thirds of all American deaths occurred in the last three months of the war - September, October, and November 1918 - due to the influenza pandemic of 1918 and the AEF's greatest battle, the Meuse-Argonne (26 September 1918 – 11 November 1918). The United States was also unique in that - due largely to the epidemic - almost half of the losses occurred in training camps in the homeland rather than on the battlefields of Europe. The United States consequently lost more soldiers and sailors to disease than in combat, with 53,402 battle deaths and 63,114 non-combat deaths.[6]

---

LINK

More died from non-combat deaths than combat.

Very easy. I would take D-day any time. Trench war fair along with the first auto weapons and chemical war fair was a bitch. No one knew of those things at the time and tactics didn't change for them.

quote:

---

This is about the first wave of D-day not overall though

---

????

If we are only talking about the first wave, then those casualty figures would be lower.

Omaha beach first wave over going into no man’s land first.

1. Beach is shorter than no man’s land
2. No mud
3. Battleship fire support

quote:

---

Estimated that 27,000 French soldiers were killed on August 22, 1914

---

And let’s not forget on the FIRST DAY of the Battle of the Somme, the British suffered 57,000 casualties, including jsut shy of 20,000 killed. And that battle raged from July 1 to Nov. 1. By the time it was over almost half a million British soldiers would become causalties. The French (who were losing about a half million at Verdin AT THE SAME TIME) lost 200,000 on the Somme as well. The Germans lost about a half a million on the Somme while also losing almost 400,000 at Verdun.

And this was 1916. The war was already two years in with almost another two years to go.

WW2 an D Day and it wouldn't be close. In WWI if you went over the top it was pretty much a death sentence. Read about the BEF in WWI and how they went over the top at the Somme, 35,000 men died in about 2-3 hours...and that was just the British. think about that for a minute. At Omaha, 42,000 men went ashore and about 4500 died most in the first wave to be sure, but in WWI, 10,000 people died in a single hour and it kept that way for another 2 hours, I'm not sure hell would be that brutal

On D Day you had a fighting chance even in the first wave and if you were lucky enough to be in the first wave of Americans( VII Corps) that went ashore at Utah Beach you got to walk ashore.

WWI was crazy. Americans generally ignore it because we were not a major contributor to it. The sheer scope of death on the frontlines was staggering.

Another note on the discussion, going over the top in WWI would mean facing frontline troops where in WW2, the German Army was being bled dry in the Eastern Front.

The real question is whether you would rather go over the top in WWI or face a banzai charge in WW2.

D Day. One of the weaker, if not weakest, part of the Atlantic Wall, the best Nazi soldiers were on the eastern front by this point, and they had very little ammo. If I could make it 2 hours, survival would almost be guaranteed.

quote:

---

and then live in that hole for months

---

Without modern medicine

Here’s a glimpse of life in the trenches of WWI