I found this very interesting-we often forget that these men didn't have the benefit of a lot of the information we have today, and even someone as highly placed as Tappen could simply be honest, but mistaken in what he believed. He was convinced that the ratio had been much more favorable for the Germans. He was surprised at the casualty figures for Verdun. While at the archives in Freiburg I read an interview with Colonel Gerhard Tappen, Chief of Operations at 2. In a few short days after an action there was generally a surprisingly good figure available. I am surprised at how accurate the figures are. At the time it must have been a nightmare trying to maintain accurate records. 90 years later, here on the Forum we are all aware of errors which crop up and usually amended. For any of the armies, how long it took before ' missing ' was translated into dead, wounded, prisoner, will have an affect on the final figures and none of this is helped by the many thousands who remain missing to this day. ![]() For the Germans, missing seems to have equated to surrendered. When reading French accounts I often get the feeling that they did not know how many wounded had been treated. I believe that very slightly wounded men who returned to the fighting that day after treatment would have been listed by British figures where as neither the Germans nor the French would have listed them. However, the different forces involved did have a different definition of a casualty. ![]() I have never had access to primary German sources but the German secondary sources I have read did not seem to be deliberately falsifying figures. Of course, you have to be careful with anything you read in my cynical opinion most writers on war, participants, or those looking at it 90 years later, are engaged in some form of spin at some level of intensity. In the case of the 28th ID the fault seems to be at the level of the division, although the corps commander, General Bullard, was also deceptive when he wrote a letter to Pershing mentioning his losses in an engagement. I do not know specifically what he was talking about. ![]() ![]() John Mosier, a historian that people either seem to love or hate, stated in that the Yanks were the only combatent in the war that actively and seriously fudged their casualty figures. The next text in the regimental history was a paragraph-long description of the cute little tent city that the regiment occupied for four days after pulling out of the bridgehead. I learned from other sources that the regiment went in with 2000 men and lost half of them in the two days. This action was mentioned in one sentence, with no mention of casualties, in the regiment's "official history". g., a regiment moved into a little bridgehead, held it for two days, and then pulled out. As to American casualties, I have studied the American engagement at a different sector (August 1918, Fismes/Fismette on the River Vesle) very carefully, using probably 30-40 sources, including many American "official histories" (every sub-unit of the AEF 28th ID in effect wrote its own history), and I found that the casualties were horrific, and every source written by anyone over the rank of first lieutenant some variety of deceptive, obscuring, or simply not mentioning casualties.
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