There are over half a million still missing from the Great War.
The Triple Entente (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million military personnel while the Central Powers lost about 4 million. At least 2 million died from diseases and 6 million went missing, presumed dead.
AS MANY AS 4 million American military personnel served in the First World War. More than 110,000 of them never returned; 4,400 are still listed as missing in action.
The last combat veteran was Claude Choules, who served in the British Royal Navy (and later the Royal Australian Navy) and died 5 May 2011, aged 110. The last veteran who served in the trenches was Harry Patch (British Army), who died on 25 July 2009, aged 111.
About 50 first world war soldiers are found on the western front each year, disinterred by the farmer's plough or developer's digger. Only one or two in ten are ever identified, said Steve Arnold, an exhumation officer with the CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) recovery and reburial unit based near Arras.
The German army suffered the highest number of military losses, totaling at more than two million men. Turkey had the highest civilian death count, largely due to the mass extermination of Armenians, as well as Greeks and Assyrians.
At the end of the war, there were approximately 79,000 Americans unaccounted for. This number included those buried with honor as unknowns, officially buried at sea, lost at sea, and missing in action. Today, more than 73,000 of those lost Americans remain totally unaccounted for from WWII.
There are no known living POWs left in Vietnam from the American War. Many veterans and survivors of those terrible years have returned to the country to visit and pay respects to their peers left behind.
By far, artillery was the biggest killer in World War I, and provided the greatest source of war wounded.
The heaviest loss of life for a single day occurred on July 1, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, when the British Army suffered 57,470 casualties.
European countries dealt a harsh punishment to Germany for its role in the First World War—a move that would soon come back to haunt the world.
Clearing the Battlefields
After 1918 the immense task of “clearing up” was carried out by the military and the civilians who were returning to their shattered communities. The landscape in the fighting lines had been smashed to pieces. Roads, woods, farms and villages were often no longer recognisable.
Troops were paid a minimum of six shillings a day (more than three times the wage of English forces) leading to the phrase 'six bob a day tourists'. Although slightly below the basic wage, it was still attractive to many because of the tough financial conditions and high unemployment in 1914.
As there were no federal provisions for burying the dead, responsibility for clearing a battlefield of dead bodies fell to individual units, volunteer organizations, and even civilians.
Today in 1916 Lt Henry Webber was killed at the Somme. At 67 he was the oldest soldier to lose his life during WW1. He had three sons who were in the British Army. All three of them outranked him, so he was thrilled that he had to salute them.
The people listed below are, or were, the last surviving members of notable groups of World War II veterans, as identified by reliable sources. About 70 million people fought in World War II between 1939 and 1945 and, as of 2022, there are still approximately 167,000 living veterans in the United States alone.
Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last known living American veteran of World War I, died on Sunday, February 27, three weeks after celebrating his 110th birthday.
Robert Russell Garwood (born April 1, 1946) is a former United States Marine. Often cited as the last verified American prisoner of war (POW) from the Vietnam War, Garwood was captured on September 28, 1965 by Việt Cộng forces near Da Nang, Quang Nam Province.
Eight million horses, donkeys and mules died in World War 1 (WWI), three-quarters of them from the extreme conditions they worked in.
Thousands of soldiers were being buried on the battlefields in individual or communal graves by their comrades. They were often buried where they fell in action, or in a burial ground on or near the battlefield.
At this peaceful site rest 368 of our military dead, most of whom gave their lives in liberating the soil of Belgium in World War I. Their headstones are aligned in four symmetrical areas around the white stone chapel that stands in the center of the cemetery.
As a first matter, POWs receive back pay that accrued during their period of captivity. They were on active duty, possibly in a combat zone, and are entitled to all the pay that they earned during that time regardless of their captive status.