Current Events > Was WW1 the worst war to be a soldier in?

(+) Yeah! (+)

There was a thing called Trench Foot that happened to ww1 soldiers. Basically your foot rotted away. It was horrific

Theres a claim that in WW2 on average grunts were in combat for 40 days over the course of 4 years. In Vietnam it was 240 days in a single a year.

There are definitely wars with lower survivability, but in terms of being able to come back to a normal life after being in constant combat, its possible Vietnam was the worst.

Zikten posted...

There was a thing called Trench Foot that happened to ww1 soldiers. Basically your foot rotted away. It was horrific

Trench foot goes way back further than WW1. It was first reported by surgeons during Napoleon's retreat from Russia. But it certainly has happened to soldiers throughout human history.

I think yall are underestimating older battles where theyd just have everybody line up with muskets and take turns killing each other in waves.

If you didnt figure out a way to stand behind someone in front of you without getting noticed the life expectancy of a conscripted soldier was probably hours.

In WW1, East Africa was possibly worse for sheer, inescapable misery than the Western Front because of the climate, tropical disease, insects, and hunger, made even worse by the impossibility of medical care or casualty evacuation because supply lines often simply collapsed over hundreds of miles of bush. You had ghost armies of starving soldiers, diseased skeletons half-naked in tattered rags.

Being on the losing side of a battle against the Mongols would suck.

ShineboxPhil posted...

Being on the losing side of a battle against the Mongols would suck.

Or on the Roman side in that one battle in the German Black Forest. Where every single Roman was wiped out when a bunch of Germans all surrounded the Romans on all sides in an ambush

Learning about Unit 731 thanks to this thread has been interesting.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

As opposed to the VietCong having environmental warfare done to them with cloud seeding and agent orange, or gatling guns leveling entire villages?

To me, the worst time will always be the defeat of La Grande Arme. Napoleon had a great plan marching into Russia, he almost caught the main general that would have stopped the war. But instead he spent a day to celebrate his birthday. This blunder gave the Russian general enough time to bolster th defenses making the siege last way longer then expected and cost way more. Then Napoleon tried negotiating a treaty and was spun into staying longer then expected. The march harm through the freezing blizzard and being constantly hounded by cossacks. Sounds like a fuckin nightmare, going from being an unstoppable army to barely being able to hang on with a high chance of dying. Fuck that shit.

I don't really know much about ancient history, but I've seen enough "every prisoner was enslaved/executed/eaten" to think it's probably worse than anything modern.

Powdered_Toast posted...

I don't really know much about ancient history, but I've seen enough "every prisoner was enslaved/executed/eaten" to think it's probably worse than anything modern.

But then with ancient times, or just not modern times, life sucked in general. So maybe dying as a soldier was better than dying more...naturally. we didn't really start living past 35 until a couple hundred years ago.

pedro45 posted...

we didn't really start living past 35 until a couple hundred years ago.

That's not really true. That number is only an average when you count in the high infant mortality rate.
The ones who survived childhood usually reached a higher age

It should be noted that the attitude toward was for glory and honor.

That mindset died in WW1.

Yes because Dan Carlin said so

Doe posted...

As opposed to the VietCong having environmental warfare done to them with cloud seeding and agent orange, or gatling guns leveling entire villages?

And the massacres and rapes of innocent civilians.

Supaitwo posted...

And the massacres and rapes of innocent civilians.

Unfortunately that's always been a part of war. Read about the sack of any city in history and you'll find all manner of horror stories.

WW1, by the way, was very far from being a minor engagement for the United States Army. Measured by any yardstick, the American commitment in France in 1917/18 -- and the losses that America suffered -- was heavier even than the decade-long involvement in Vietnam.

By comparison with Vietnam, this is what WW1 spelt for Americans:

• more combat deaths (53,402 over 47,359) 12% more;
• more total military deaths (116,516 over 58,156) over twice as many;
• a higher daily rate of combat deaths (132.2 over 15.3) over eight and a half times higher;
• a higher proportion of combat deaths as a percentage of in-theatre personnel (2.56% over 1.83%) 40% higher;
• a higher proportion of total military deaths as a percentage of total personnel on active service (2.46% over 0.64%) over three and a half times higher;
• a higher proportion of total military deaths as a percentage of total US population (0.116% over 0.029%) four times higher;
• a higher proportion of total personnel on active service as a percentage of total US population (4.73% over 4.54%).

The Battle of Meuse-Argonne in 1918 remains one of the biggest and the bloodiest battle in all of US military history. In forty-seven days of brutal combat in and around the Argonne forest, around twice as many American soldiers were killed in action than were killed on Okinawa 27 years later. I find it a little baffling that WW1 often seems to get shrugged off as not that big of a deal for America.

Any of you play Verdun, Tennenburg or Isonzo?

For a moment I think Isonzo was the only WWI game to include a German faction.
But I think they added one, but for a moment it was Italy Vs. Austro-Hungary.

Americans waltzed into Europe in 1918 pretending that they knew what they were doing, and then spent the better part of a year running straight into the German trenches while the British and French were desperately trying to tell them how dumb of a tactic that was.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

Americans waltzed into Europe in 1918 pretending that they knew what they were doing, and then spent the better part of a year running straight into the German trenches while the British and French were desperately trying to tell them how dumb of a tactic that was.

The US joined WW1 in 1917.

Supaitwo posted...

The US joined WW1 in 1917.

Didn't start arriving at the front in force until the next year, though