What were the chances of surviving the entire Great War?

by Helix_Apostle

If you were a British infantry soldier in the Army before 1914, what were your chances of surviving unscathed? Are there many memoirs lasting the whole war?

Sjoerder

For a related question, see What were your odds of surviving "going over the top" in a WWI trench? with a guess at the odds by /u/DuxBelisarius.

gytherin

Apologies if I'm doing this wrong - I'm relatively new here.

There's a long thread at the Great War Forum on this subject. https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/171456-how-many-front-line-troops-survived/

Gorgon Corrigan's book, "Mud, Blood and Poppycock" has a chapter on statistics, though it's broad-strokes rather than the fine-grained stuff you're after.

My grandfather was a front-line regular soldier in 1914, and survived, though not unscathed; he got a Blighty one and was invalided out.