Civilian casualties

“ Certainly the number of civilian dead must be very much less, and amongst them those killed by collateral damage as opposed to the deliberate targeting of them by the LTTE as they tried to escape must be minimal. ”

“ Some of the slightly wounded men rode on the gun-limbers, others with more serious hurts in such ambulances as had managed to get up, a few on camel-back, while the remainder were actually carried in stretchers by their unwounded comrades. That these men with their heavy loads ever managed to lift their feet out of the mud was a miracle. I do not know what system of reliefs was adopted, but by the time the wounded were safely brought in, a whole battalion must have taken its turn merely to carry its own few casualties. ”

“ But through four long years scarcely a family in Great Britain and the Dominions that possessed men on the fighting fronts—and none were finally exempt except on medical or industrial grounds—but was either in mourning for, or in constant fear of death for one or more of its male members, whether by bullet, shell-fire or bomb, or must witness the return to them of husbands, brothers, and sons, more or less injured for life. The total American casualties are 264,000. ”

“ Leave the trenches and retire behind the firing line with me. Here we are on roads lined with men on stretchers some dead, scores mortally wounded, hundreds upon hundreds of casualties in one or another degree of collapse. The middle of the roadway is filled by dozens of ambulances after every action; there is perhaps a mile length of hospital trains waiting in a siding to convey the wounded to base hospitals. ”

“ On the ground evacuated 41 ‘missing’ and two disabled mountain guns were left in the enemy’s hands. The French must have suffered much the same casualties—Suchet gives no estimate, but Martinien’s invaluable lists show two officers killed and twelve wounded, which at the usual rate between officers and men implies about 300 rank and file hit. ”

“ Public authorities have generally taken account of the number of their own men who have been wounded and killed in battle, and of the casualties in the opposing armies. Gunpowder and steel, and the manifold weapons, instruments, and means of destruction in the hands of the enemy are commonly considered as the principal, if not the only sources of danger to the soldier, and ground of anxiety to his friends; and the nation reckons its losses in war by the number of those who were wounded and killed in battle. ”

“ On the 8th of May, 1856, Lord Panmure made a statement in the House of Lords, to the effect that from the 19th of September, 1854 (that is, the day before the battle of the Alma) , 270 Officers and 19,314 men were killed, or died of wounds or of disease, and that 2873 men were discharged the service as incapacitated for further service by war; total, 22,457 casualties,—excluding, apparently, soldiers who died on board ship, sailors and marines serving on shore, and departmental troops. ”

“ In a moving army the elements of destruction, armed men and munitions of war, have the right of way; and the means of preserving and sustaining even their own lives are left to bring up the rear as they best can. Hence, when the shock and crash of battle is over, and troops are advancing or retreating and all roads are blocked, and the medical staff trying to force its way through with supplies, prompt and adequate relief can scarcely ever reach the wounded. The darkness of night comes down upon them like a funeral pall, as they lie in their blood, tortured with thirst and traumatic fever. ”

“ The enemy followed us closely right up to our piquets, and but for the steadiness of the retirement our casualties must have been even more numerous than they were. As it was, they amounted to 15 men killed, 16 officers and 177 men wounded, and 2 men missing.
The enemy's loss was estimated at 1,000. For hours they were seen [Page 107] carrying the dead in carts back to the city. ”

“ When it reached the trenches a preliminary bombardment was the stroke of fate that led to the prompt capitulation of some two hundred survivors to a British charge. The remainder of the thousand men was practically all casualties from shell-bursts, which, granting some exaggeration in a prisoner's tale, illustrates what killing the guns may wreak if the target is under their projectiles. ”

“ Into these large, quiet wards, far away from the roar of the heavy guns, the crackle of machine-guns and rifles, the wounded lads came, carried by train and ambulance.
Many who will read these lines have seen the troop-trains, with their hundreds of khaki-clad lads leaning out from car windows, cheering, singing, and waving, as they were carried swiftly by on their way to seaport or training-camp. Perhaps they have watched long companies of soldier boys march up dusty roads, while flags waved and bands played and people cheered, to the lines of cars waiting for them. ”

“ With only 8,000 men engaged in the fiercest battles, the Marine Corps casualties numbered 69 officers and 1,531 enlisted men dead and 78 officers and 2,435 enlisted men wounded seriously enough to be officially reported by cablegram, to which number should be added not a few whose wounds did not incapacitate them for further fighting. ”

“ Wounded men everywhere. Crawling about, delirious with pain and agony; lying prone and almost motionless, staring up into the blue sky, dying slowly and making no sign; shrieking, groaning, cursing, praying, imploring help, begging for a bandage, for water, lying quietly, laughing even,—wounded men everywhere. In hospitals, under trees, in tents, in houses, in stables, with surgeons probing and cutting and carving and sawing and clumsily bandaging; in ambulances jolting off towards Springfield; limping along to hide and escape another hurt—wounded men everywhere. ”

“ If they kill all our young men, the old men and women, and even our children, will seize their arms and continue the conflict.
At night. The ambulances are coming in with our wounded. They report that all the enemy’s strong defenses were stormed, just as we could perceive from the sounds. They say that our brave men suffered much in advancing against the intrenchments, exposed to the fire of cannon and small arms, without being able to see the foe under their shelter; but when they leaped over the breastworks and turned the enemy’s guns on them, our loss was more than compensated. ”

“ There were only 78 civilian deaths alleged in all army operations in the last seven months of 2008. In over 400 airstrikes, there were fewer than 20 in which there were even allegations of civilian deaths, and in all such cases I was promptly given information of the target taken, and the distance from regular civilian areas. Of course no one could guarantee that there were no civilians in military installations, but I also know that my other staff complained that, even when precise locations were provided, the air force would not strike if there were civilian dwellings nearby. ”

“ Other civilians crawled up from their cellars in Loos, spattered with German blood, and wandered about among soldiers of many British battalions who crowded amid the scarred and shattered houses, and among the wounded men who came staggering through the streets, where army doctors were giving first aid in the roadway, while shells were bursting overhead and all the roar of the battle filled the air for miles around with infernal tumult. ”

“ The British casualties in the first 12 months of the Great War amounted to 365,000. In this war, I am thankful to say, British killed, wounded, prisoners and missing, including civilians, do not exceed 92,000, and of these a large proportion are alive as prisoners of war. Looking more widely around, one may say that throughout all Europe, for one man killed or wounded in the first year perhaps five were killed or wounded in 1914-15. ”

“ As it swept across the open to reach the heights, it faced a well-dire [pg 243] cted fire from the Spanish works, and men dropped from the ranks, wounded and dying. Of the officers directing that advance 35 fell either killed or wounded and 328 men. These numbers appear small when hastily scanned or when brought into comparison with the losses in battle during the Civil War, but if we take time to imagine 35 officers lying on the ground either killed or wounded and 328 men in the same condition, the carnage will not appear insignificant. ”

“ They paid their bill and went out, and as they crossed the square they met a couple of the soldiers who had disappeared into the smoke. They were moving at the double, but at a word from the officers they halted. Both wore the Red Cross badge of the Army Medical Corps on their arms, and one explained hurriedly that they were going for an ambulance, that there was a woman killed, one man and a woman and two children badly wounded. They ran on, and the two officers moved hastily towards the shell-struck house. ”

“ The casualty total is roughly 900, with 350 killed and 550 wounded. There are approximately 1,500 men in our army hospitals. For those who unselfishly and heroically gave their lives, for their widows and orphans, I bespeak your heartfelt support and assistance. ”

“ To exaggerate the picture of this sanguinary strife is impossible:—the small groups of soldiers seeking shelter from the cart-wheels, pieces of timber, fire-balls, and other missiles hurled down upon them; the wounded crawling past the fire-balls, many of them scorched and perfectly black, and covered with mud, from having fallen into the lunette, where three hundred soldiers were suffocated or drowned; and all this time the French on the top of the parapets, jeering and cracking their jokes, and deliberately picking off whom they chose. ”

“ Their second and third lines of defense had been carried, and they were existing in shell-craters and trenches hastily scraped up under ceaseless artillery fire.
The horrors of the battlefield were piled up to heights of agony and terror. Living men dwelt among the unburied dead, made their way to the front-lines over heaps of corpses, breathed in the smell of human corruption and had always in their ears the cries of the wounded they could not rescue. They wrote these things in tragic letters—thousands of them—which never reached their homes in Germany, but lay in their captured ditches. ”

“ Only their eyes showed that they lived. These were turned beseechingly upon the French Red Cross doctors, kneeling waist-high in the straw and unreeling long white bandages. The wounded watched them drawing slowly nearer, until they came, fighting off death, clinging to life as shipwrecked sailors cling to a raft and watch the boats pulling toward them.
A young German officer, his smart cavalry cloak torn and slashed, and filthy with dried mud and blood and with his eyes in bandages, groped toward a pail of water, feeling his way with his foot, his arms outstretched, clutching the air. ”

“ The extent to which sickness prevailed within the city had become alarming. Accommodation and other necessities for the suffering were severely taxed; for although regular combats between the opposing forces were not frequent, the results from collisions of daily occurrence, and of almost continuous fire from the batteries of the enemy, were a large influx of wounded men. ”

“ Feeble old men tottering along, tearful women carrying their babes or dragging other little ones by the hand, invalids in broken down waggons or wheel-barrows, wounded civilians hastily bandaged and supported by their despairing friends hurried by in ever-increasing numbers. ”

“ The troops in the cantonment consisted of the following:—6th Dragoon Guards, 60th Rifles, and two batteries of Bengal Artillery (all Europeans) ; Natives, 11th and 20th Infantry, and 3rd Cavalry. Every man, woman, and child (Europeans) that fell in their way was murdered. And, as an eye-witness of some of these scenes, I can say that every horror, making war hideous, attended this dreadful outbreak. The cry of murder from poor defenceless women and children echoed throughout the land. Death in all modes was rampant—from the sword, bayonet, water, flames, and starvation. ”

“ It must not be assumed that they have merely gone to the base hospitals to attend to the wounded soldiers brought to them from the front and carried to them through the dangerous area. Some at least have gone right to the trenches into the midst of the inferno of bullets and shells and poisonous gases, where the air is filled with the groans of the dying and the stench of the unburied dead and where the very soil trembles from the force of the new and devilish explosives that reduce humanity to a pulp. ”

“ A scattered remnant of the attackers ran back, some whole and some hurt, thousands crawled away wounded, to reach the safe shelter of their support trenches, some to be struck down by the shells that still kept pounding down upon the death-swept field. ”

“ Comparisons would be odious, but it cannot but be noticed that much more damage to civilians has occurred in other theatres of warfare. It seems that there are a few countries which benefit from total impunity, as far as criticism from what is termed the international community goes, with regard to aerial and terrestrial attacks that lead to civilian deaths. Sadly the fact that life is unfair has to be recognized. ”

“ As we passed the sentinels at the gates of the yards we were forced to halt in a jam of ammunition and food wagons. To the army that survives is given the first thought. The wounded in the ambulance could wait. We took right of way only over civilians—including refugees. ”

“ The whole city is in confusion, ninety thousand soldiers are here now, and eighty thousand more are expected this week. Every house-holder must take as many as he can accommodate, and the strain on the people is heavy. We heard yesterday of the terrible disaster to the troops that left here on the 13th, three transports were sunk by the Russians. Five hundred of the wounded from South Hill battle have been brought here, and whenever I go out, I see long lines of stretchers and covered ambulances bringing in more men. ”