Reading a Casualty Table

The idea

A casualty table can mislead three ways, and the anchor's figures show each. First, "casualties" means killed, wounded, missing and captured together, so Russia's more than nine million casualties, the witness says, are not nine million dead. Second, percentages hide bases: the anchor's seventy-six percent casualty rate for Russia and France is a share of those mobilized, and its thirty-nine percent for Britain rests on a smaller army. Third, totals differ by who counts: the anchor's twenty million dead includes civilians and disease, the witness's eight and a half million counts soldiers. So read a table by asking three questions in order: casualties or dead, share of what, and who is included. Then compare like with like: the Somme's four hundred twenty thousand British casualties against Verdun's five hundred forty thousand French, both casualties, both the anchor's, both for one battle. Practice on the Tannenberg line, ninety thousand prisoners and fifty thousand casualties, and say what each word counts.