Was artillery as intense during battles as tv and movies about world war 2 suggest?

That's because Britain starts the shit, calls upon its "chicks to help the mother hen". Then shit goes south and the US has to step in and pull the chestnuts out of the fire.

When the shit is deep, Britain wanting to buy all the war making materials they can get. Then when their treasury runs low, want the US to provide it on credit. Then they beg for the US to send troops. Once, the situation is resolved, they whine that the US came in late, claim they didn't do much and were not critical to the victory and complain about the debt owed for the war material they were begging for, and claim the US are war profiteers. Happened in WWI and in WWII.

In WWI, Australia suffered 61,527 military deaths from all causes. Canada suffered another 64,996 military deaths. These deaths were stretched over the course of four years (1914-1918). The US was only engaged for less than six months (5 months 15 days), from 28 May 1918 to 11 November 1918 and suffered 116,708 military deaths. American manpower broke the Germans backs, suffering in less than six months, very nearly as many casualties as Australia and Canada combined lost over four years.
British hubris was one of the main reasons the US was so isolationist leading up to WWII. Why get involved in another European War when our sacrifices 20 years earlier were scoffed at and belittled. A lot of fathers that had gone off to fight the Hun's didn't want their sons to do the same.

 

You know I was stirring mate…We don’t love the Poms either…

 

Well, this does nor happened on ww2 but on Spanish Civil War

The Franco army make fire from air and sea (Baleares Cruiser) to civil people that were trying to scape from Malaga 3000-5000 people died on the road.

In the 70’s many was normal to find bones when repairing the road.


Málaga–Almería road massacre - Wikipedia

 

Attached is a chart I made of the rounds fired by the 967th Field Artillery. This was a battalion of 12 155mm howitzers. Note the rounds fired for the Rhine crossing, Operation Plunder. Almost no rounds were fired leading up to it as they relocated and maintained operational silence before the crossing. They they unleashed over 3100 rounds in a single day. Some FA guys I talked to say they don't think it was possible. But they probably did as much damage with two volleys in Dec, 1944, when they unleashed Posit radar proximity fuses, with dad calculating time on target for maximum effect, on a troop concentration in Duren. The first volley of air bursts would have been murderous.

 

Artillery? The US does Artillery....

Nuclear Mortar!


Or Fired from a piece...

 

Browsing through, the numbers intrigued me. Could it be possible?

Certainly the US Census Bureau gives the figures quoted above. However the footnotes in their online pdf give Aussie and Canadian casualties as entirely battle-related, while for the USA there were 53,402 "battle deaths" and 63,114 "non-combat deaths".

According to the Library of Congress, these non-combat deaths were mostly from the Influenza Epidemic.

(The American Expeditionary Forces  |  A World at War  |  Articles and Essays  |  Stars and Stripes: The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919  |  Digital Collections  |  Library of Congress)

Which puts us at 53,402 US WW1 battle deaths vs 61,527 Australians and 64,996 Canadians

Also worth noting that those US combat deaths include casualties from Russia (until 1919) and Serbia (until 1920) although in fairness they will be a teeny proportion.


I had also taken a very quick look at proportions. The USA had 4,734,991 in service
Australia had 416,809 in service
Canada had 619,000 in service

In terms of personnel / population both Canada and Australia are ahead, though surprisingly not by much - 8.5% for Australia, 7% for Canada and 5% for the USA

Overall I came away from my statistical exploration feeling surprise and admiration for the American mobilisation, but also feeling a little bit narked at the US statistics which compare combat deaths to combat deaths + Spanish Flu deaths, and also do not keep the same date range.