Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 215, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1917 — Chances Are 25 to 1 Boys Will Return. [ARTICLE]

Chances Are 25 to 1 Boys Will Return.

As Company M gets nearer the real line of action the question more and more presents itself, “What chance has he of return?” It will perhaps be comforting to many to consider the facts in this connection: A man’s chances in France are Twenty-five to one against beingkilled in one year’s time. Five to one against being wounded. If .wounded— Four chances out of ten of recovering completely and returning to the firing line. These figures give the lie tQ the deliberate misstatements circulated in print and word of mouth by German agents or pacifist fanatics. The order of danger in the various branches of the army is: 1. Medical and sanitary service. 2. Engineers, miners and sappers. 3. Infantry. 4. Artillery. 5. Aviation. The doctors have the most dangerous job, the airmen the safest. Cavalry is no longer used, unless as infantry. The war college figures and estimates indicate total loss in one year of all belligerents is about four per cent killed in action, died of wounds and died of disease. These figures compiled from casualty lists obtained both from the central powers and the allies are probably too high for the fighting on the western front, where the arts of protection, cover, trenching and barrage fire cut ,down the number of slain. * The average is fattened by the heavy losses of Russian front, where the officers frequently drove unarmed men to storm German trenches, enfilading their own troops in the rear with machine gun fire to force them forward. The estimates also include the heavy losses of the; first months of the war on the western front, when the fighting wa sin the open and large masses of men were frequently caught with machine guns or subjected to direct shrapnel bombardment.