Research Has anyone ever calculated what percent of wounded returned to service?

[W. Caldwell-37thNC]

Hey folks, posting this out of curiousity. Does anyone know what percent of wounded soldiers returned to service?

 

[Coonewah Creek]

Col. Trevor Dupuy's classic study shows that for the American Civil War, the average ratio of wounded to killed was 4.55 to 1 and the ratio of surviving wounded to battle deaths was 2.38 to 1. Of course some of those surviving wounded would be permanently disabled and discharged. I don't know of any study that specifically tried to determine the percentage of the surviving wounded that returned to the ranks. Of course there are many documented cases of individuals being wounded multiple times and returning to fight again each time.

 

[jackt62]

Wonder how those statistics compare to other American wars?

 

[Coonewah Creek]

Wonder how those statistics compare to other American wars?

Here's the PDF (Handbook on Ground Forces Attrition in Modern Warfare). It was published in 1986, so it is limited to wars prior to that date.

 

[David Knight]

I presume that units also lost men from disease and other non-battle related causes are there any records on this aspect and how many were able to return to duty? I have recently read a book on British Medical records from WWI and the records for the Italian Theatre in 1917-18 show that a british soldier stood a much better chance of getting Veneral Disease than being killed or wounded.

 

[W. Caldwell-37thNC]

Col. Trevor Dupuy's classic study shows that for the American Civil War, the average ratio of wounded to killed was 4.55 to 1 and the ratio of surviving wounded to battle deaths was 2.38 to 1. Of course some of those surviving wounded would be permanently disabled and discharged. I don't know of any study that specifically tried to determine the percentage of the surviving wounded that returned to the ranks. Of course there are many documented cases of individuals being wounded multiple times and returning to fight again each time

This was helpful, thank you.