UK, The Times - Index of Casualties, 1914

The Times Newspaper - British Army casualties 1914

This is a roll call of British Army non-fatal casualties as reported in The Times newspaper in Great Britain between the 3rd September 1914 and the 27th February 1915. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) first went into action at Mons in Belgium on the 23rd August 1914 and this list charts casualties from the very earliest encounters through to early 1915. Typically, officer casualties would be reported within a matter of days, with other rank casualties often appearing between four and six weeks after the actual event.

Men who were killed in action, died of wounds or who died as a result of disease are not recorded here. Their names do appear in the Times Newspapers of the day but have been excluded from this particular list which focuses on non-fatal casualties: men who were wounded, were returned sick, were reported missing or became prisoners of war. Some men appear multiple times in this collection. For instance, a man could be reported missing and then subsequently reported to have been captured or, indeed, to be not missing. Lieutenant Bernard Law Montgomery of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment - subsequently Montgomery of Alamein in the Second World War - was an early casualty. Reported missing on the 8th September 1914, and published as such in The Times on the 10th September, he would later rejoin his regiment in October 1914.

A separate notes section gives useful additional information for some men. For instance, on the 15th September 1914, Lt Francis Needham Kilmorey of the Grenadier Guards was reported to have been wounded. A note against this entry reads, "Lord Kilmorey has received a telegram stating that his second son, the Hon Francis Needham, a Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, who was reported missing last week, is lying in the Neuilly Hospital, slightly wounded."

There are over 78,000 entries in this casualty roll, grim testimony to the heavy losses sustained by the BEF in 1914.