casualties

Verdun by numbers

10 months. Duration of the battle: lasting from 21st February until 18 December 1916. Verdun was the longest conflict of the First World War.

The Civil War by numbers

Infographics: Calum Henderson / Images: Wikimedia Commons

New names to be added to Bomber Command archive

A further 9,000 names are to be added to the Bomber Command archive, in a project that has been described as a ‘labour of love’ by its head. The Losses Database, launched 12 years ago, already contains information about the…

The Battle of Lützen: 16 November 1632

Stephen Roberts analyses the crucial battle that cost the life of the Swedish king.

LefT A temporary memorial to some of the soldiers of the 111th Baden Reserve Infantry Regiment set up during search excavations at the Winterberg Tunnel in April 2021.

German mass grave found in WWI tunnel to be consecrated as a war memorial

On 4 May 1917, the entrance to the tunnel on the Chemin des Dames collapsed following French shelling.

The Searchers: the quest for the lost of the First World War

One of the most tragic consequences of the First World War was the idea and the reality of ‘the missing’. All earlier wars had victims of which no trace was ever found, but the world’s first global industrialised conflict created…

The Past

New campaign urges public to learn about local war dead

The initiative coincides with War Graves Week, from 21 – 28 May, promoted by the CWGC to raise awareness of wartime history within local communities and the work of the commission in maintaining that heritage.

Crucible of Hell: Okinawa: the last great battle of the Second World War

In this year of reflection on the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, too often our Western gaze falls solely on events in Europe. We rightly mourn those who died in the final, catastrophic battles in Nazi Germany and celebrate the final end of war in Europe on VE Day. But when the guns fell silent in Europe, the desperate fight between the Allies and the Japanese raged on. In Crucible of Hell, Saul David takes the reader on a journey to Okinawa, ‘the last great battle of the Second World War’.

OPPOSITE US marines in Okinawa, June 1945. It proved one of the most gruelling and costly battles of the Pacific War, filling US leaders with grim anxiety about the likely casualties in the event of a landing on the Japanese mainland. ABOVE Major General Mitsuru Ushijima (1887 1945), the Japanese commander on Okinawa during the battle. He committed suicide on the final day. BELOW The USS Idaho shells Japanese positions on Okinawa. The US fleet played a key role in providing heavy artillery support to US ground forces.

Endgame in the Pacific: The Battle of Okinawa, 1 April – 22 June 1945

Marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in the Pacific, Alexander Izza analyses the ferocious last stand of the Japanese Empire.

Left background The dead, dying, and wounded lay far thicker on the field of Waterloo on the evening of 18 June 1815 than on the Somme on the evening of 1 July 1916 around 55,000 of them across some four square miles. John Heaviside Clark’s famous depiction, based on sketches done on the battlefield, captures the scale of it. left FOREGROUND A British assistant surgeon of infantry in Waterloo period uniform.

The Darker Side of Victory: Wellington’s medical service at Waterloo

Historian of military medicine Mick Crumplin takes us into the grisly world of Napoleonic-era casualty treatment.