What was the average life expectency of the avearge combat soldier in ww2. Obviously some soldiers fought and survived the whole war. where as other may have been killed within the 1st few minutes of combat :cry: Also these would change depending in which theatre and area of operations they were in. Anyone got any ideas on this one?
Only got two figures so far: which give quite a contrast Soviet "grunt" - Stalingrad - 24 hours Canadian platoon commander - NW Europe - 6 weeks. Neither look good Oli
second LTs the jr officers had about the highest rate of injury or death of anybody and still do. do not sell life insurance to a 2nd LT. you might get some idea by look at the stats for kiled and wounded for units in different areas.
Not really, if you survived enough battles your unit would be promoted to Guards and you'd be getting the really hard jobs!
Thats illelogical (sp?). The more time you spend in the battlefield, the higher the odds for something to happen to you increase. Some day, you WILL die.
So, by reasoning, if a soldier gets killed in his first battle, there's a smaller chance he will die? Christian
Such a statistical measurement would be useless from a practical standpoint. The large numbers of combat soldiers that actually saw little combat plus the wide variations between those that died in the early battles and those that died in the final months or year of the war not to mention those that survived the whole war unscathed would render the mean life expectancy as pretty much ...well...meaningless It would be more useful if one took a single unit, say a division or a bomber group and calculated the days in combat before becoming a casualty or missions flown before rotating or becoming a casualty. That kind of study would have to be calculated retrospectively since nobody collected that kind of data at the time AFAIK.
I thought that RAF Bomber Command did? They used to note stats like you were more likely to get killed during your first few missions (when inexperienced) or your last few missions before rotation (when you'd started to relax a bit), and warn the aircrew about them quite strongly... As far as I know. I'll probably be wrong again!
What he means is that the odds of you dying in battle are the same every day you are in battle, and therefore you're running a greater risk the longer you are in combat (the same risk, but for a longer period).
This fails to take into account of course that soldiers will gather experience that whilst it will not make them invincible will help increase their chances of survival as they are less likely to make silly, possibly fatal mistakes - all the while they are rotated to regularly to safe areas for a little R&R. I guess that's the probably what was supposed to be the point of the original statement that started all this off, but I did like Christian's take on it!
There's quite a learning curve in combat initiation. At first you know nothing and can die very quickly. If you survive, you get smart fairly quickly. However, for those in combat with little or no respite, weariness can overcome learning. An awful lot of casualties happen because somebody makes a boo-boo, but there is also an awful lot of "wrong place - wrong time." Face it, battlefields ain't healthy places.
Then there are the replacements... In watching veterans recant their Airborne experiences in "The Band of Brothers" most stated that it was the replacements that always got knocked-off. The tight-knit original members didn't didn't bother to get to know them, and most often made them walk "point"... and that didn't help survivability. (Same as in the Vietnam war.) I heard some years ago that the life-span of an M-60 gunner in Vietnam was about 16 seconds... after a fire-fight began. Tim
