Civilian casualty ratio
Some 7 million combatants on both sides are estimated to have died during World War I, along with an estimated 10 million non-combatants, including 6.6 million civilians. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 59%. Boris Urlanis notes a lack of data on civilian losses in the Ottoman Empire, but estimates 8.6 million military killed and dead and 6 million civilians killed and dead in the other warring countries. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 42%. Most of the civilian fatalities were due to famine, typhus, or Spanish flu rather than combat action. The relatively low ratio of civilian casualties in this war is due to the fact that the front lines on the main battlefront, the Western Front, were static for most of the war, so that civilians were able to avoid the combat zones.
Canadian women in the World Wars
One of the greatest consequences of the First World War was the number of lives lost, missing, and wounded throughout the entirety of the battles. The Allied and Central powers felt immense casualties and losses with 22,447,500 and 16,403,000 (MIA, KIA, WIA), respectively. Nurses faced this reality throughout the war and even on rare instances, Canadian nurses lost their lives while on duty. The most prominent cases of this was the death of four nursing sisters on May 19, 1918, during the bombing raid on No. 1 Canadian General Hospital at Étaples, France, and the death of 14 nursing sisters and over 200 other service personnel on June 27, 1918, when the HMHS Llandovery Castle was sunk by the U-86 The HMHS Llandovery Castle was one of five Canadian hospital ships that served in the First World War. In total, 234 lives were lost with only 24 survivors. The sinking of the HMHS Llandovery Castle was one of the most significant Canadian naval disasters of the First World War, in terms of the overall death toll. By the end of the war, 47 Canadian nurses lost their lives while on active duty, victims of enemy attack or disease contracted from patients Overall, Canadian nurses dealt with the realities of war and were key assets to the Canadian military and Allied forces.