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.
Tulsk
World War 1
Tulsk was no different from most other British and Irish villages and towns during World War One, in that it contributed to the Allied effort of resisting the Central Powers' threat to European stability. John McGrath, from Tulsk, as published in Ireland's Memorial Records, is registered as a Private in the North Staffordshire Regiment - 12th Battalion - and was killed in action in France on July 28, 1918. His grave, amongst 370, can be viewed at Borre British Cemetery in northern France (grave number 11.F.6). Another WW1 soldier is Mark Phibbs of Corbally, Tulsk. He served in the Leinster Regiment, died of post traumatic stress disorder injuries sustained during battle while in France, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. Both McGrath and Phibbs are some of between 30,000 and 35,000 Irish who perished in the Great War. Two other men, Henry Armitage and William Garry, were RIC officers in Tulsk during that same war, and went to the front after an outdoor send-off in the village (from contemperaneous newspaper reports). Their fate is unknown, like that of half of the men who died in World War I (over 9 million), scattered as they are beneath the green fields of mainland Europe. The Cenotaph memorial, erected mostly in England and France - out of the ashes of the first global catastrophe of the 20th century - goes some way to remembering these dead. (re. Jay Winter, Lecture 18 - Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning - from Yale Open Courses, European Civilisation, available online).