Military Power

* World War 1 was officially started in 1914

* More than 8.5 million people died as a direct result of World War 1

* Today there is still an unexploded mine shaft from World War 1 at the New Zealand Memorial Park in Messines.

* The German cruiser Emden23 sunk 23 Allied vessels

* More than 2,600 Allied ships were sunk by the German U-Boats during World War 1

* During World War 1, 24 total nations declared war on one or more of the Central Powers

* The were 5,200 US Casualties per square mile during the Battle of Belleau Wood in June of 1918

* Germany produced 123 Zeppelin and similar airships during World War 1

* There were 56,000 mines laid by US Navy during the North Sea barrage

* Britain produced 5,400 Sopwith Camel fighter planes during World War 1

* There were an estimated 58,000 British casualties on the first day on the Battle of the Somme

* An sstimated 32 million artillery shells were fired during the Battle of Verdun

* There were approximately 275,000 Italian prisoners taken at Caporetto

* The Japanese sent 75,000 troops to Siberia in 1918

* Under The Versailles Treaty, the size of German Army was limited to 100,000 soldiers.

* Over 19 million soldiers from all nations were wounded during World War 1

During 1915-16 the average life expectancy of a RFC pilot on the Western Front was just eleven days. Some replacement pilots arriving at the Front had as few as five hours flying time in their logbooks and had never flown the type of aircraft with which they were going to fly in combat. Others would arrive in the morning and be dead by the afternoon.

In Pat Barker's novel "Regeneration" one of the characters has once spent 40 hours awake under artillery barrage, as have many others on the frontmost trenches (if the book is accurate).

count1man wrote:*
* Over 19 million soldiers from all nations were wounded during World War 1

Susanne Everett (Annex to ‘World War I’) gives a more precise figure of wounded as 21,219,452.

Allies
Russia 4,950,000
France 4,266,000
British Empire 2,090,212
Italy 947,000
USA 234,300
Japan 907
Rumania 120,000
Serbia 133,148
Belgium 44,686
Greece 21,000
Portugal 13,751 (on the Western Front with an estimated 6,000 more in Mozambique and Angola)
Montenegro 10,000
Total 12,831,004

Central Powers

Germany 4,216,058
Austria Hungary 3.620,000
Turkey 400,000
Bulgaria 152,390
Total 8,388,448