World War I casualties
The total number of deaths includes from 9 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 8 million, including about 6 million due to war-related famine and disease. The Triple Entente (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million military personnel while the Central Powers lost about 4 million. At least 2 million died from diseases and 6 million went missing, presumed dead. This article lists the casualties of the belligerent powers based on official published sources.
Horses in World War I
The continued resupply of horses was a major issue of the war. One estimate puts the number of horses that served in World War I at around six million, with a large percentage of them dying due to war-related causes. In 1914, the year the war began, the British Army owned only about 25,000 horses. This shortfall required the US to help with remount efforts, even before it had formally entered the war. Between 1914 and 1918, the US sent almost one million horses overseas, and another 182,000 were taken overseas with American troops. This deployment seriously depleted the country's equine population. Only 200 returned to the US, and 60,000 were killed outright. By the middle of 1917, Britain had procured 591,000 horses and 213,000 mules, as well as almost 60,000 camels and oxen. Britain's Remount Department spent £67.5 million on purchasing, training and delivering horses and mules to the front. The British Remount Department became a major multinational business and a leading player in the international horse trade, through supplying horses to not only the British Army but also to Canada, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, and even a few to the US. Shipping horses between the US and Europe was both costly and dangerous; American Expeditionary Force officials calculated that almost seven times as much room was needed per ton for animals than for average wartime cargo, and over 6,500 horses and mules were drowned or killed by shell fire on Allied ships attacked by the Germans. In turn, New Zealand lost around 3 percent of the nearly 10,000 horses shipped to the front during the war.