I just finished reading "Tolkien and the Great War" by John Garth, and he points out a quote by Tolkien that says that all but one of his close friends were killed during the war. This got me thinking: were junior officers hit harder than their enlisted counterparts? If they were higher, how did this impact the middle and upper classes of Great Britain? What about the other major belligerents?
The British Army totalled 247,432 men at the outbreak of war in August 1914 and recruited 4,952,767 and giving a total Army figure for the war of total personnel as 5,200,199.
The Army as a whole suffered 702,917 deaths from all causes during WWI. That gives a death rate of 13.51% for the British Army.
The BBC cites here that casualty rates among enlisted men were 12%, while among officers it was 17%. This seems to come from a claim by historian Dan Snow.
This discrepancy has been put down to many factors: a) the suggestion that junior officers made up a higher proportion of the British Army compared to European counterparts, due to higher numbers of volunteers from higher social classes who were educated enough to become officers, b) that a junior officer's role often involved leading charges and raiding parties "over the top" and was therefore more dangerous, as fewer junior officers worked in, say, logistics than the infantry, as they didn't have the training as there wasn't enough time, c) that officers, until 1916, would wear gold badges and accoutrements on their uniforms, and often carried revolvers rather than rifles, making them easier to spot.
It becomes a bit difficult with junior officers because establishing the numbers amongst the proliferation of ranks is a lot of P.T.
'Bloody Red Tabs' by Davies and Maddocks deals with casualties of the rank of Brigadier and above of which they cite 1257 served and 232 casualties, giving an overall rate of 18.5%.
I'll do some number crunching when I get home and see what I can come up with.
Well, this is a bit disappointing! I was coming to be able to download all casualties from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website for analysis but it only let me extract 75,000 records in one go :/
Roughly though, from this source
Privates - 584668 Lt & 2nd Lt - 33700
Which gives 1 subaltern for every 17 privates. Assuming a conservative ratio of 1:30, we can see how disproportionate the risk was.
A better figure can be obtained from Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War where it is officially stated that 46,703 officers and 861,668 other ranks were killed and 98,025 officers and 1,992,187 other ranks were wounded (note this would include men wounded several times)
Thus the ratio of officers to other ranks killed is 1 to 18.5 and wounded as 1 to 20.
The document also gives the figure of the BEF in November 1918 as 112,200 officers and 2,556,536 (excluding labour units and followers etc), roughly 1 officer for every 23 other ranks (roughly 1 in 30 including labourers and followers etc).
Hope that helps!