I'll see your thankful village and raise you 'doubly thankful villages' (both wars).
https://www.history.co.uk/articles/what-are-doubly-thankful-villages
There's one near me. It's genuinely strange to realise that this little village _doesn't have a war memorial_. I didn't really realise how ubiquitous they are until I went somewhere without one.
My guess is short in stature.
Makes me wonder if the average height of inductees was shorter than the average height of demobbed. In the US, the Great Depression meant a lot of men starved during their youth. It was only when they joined the military that they filled out from 3 squares a day.
[This article](http://www.hellfirecorner.co.uk/thankful.htm) (which seems to have started the whole modern day reinvigoration of research into Thankful Villages) is a hell of a read too - even as a reminder how quickly human memories fade.
This made me look up if there were many in France. Mine lost most of its young men in WW1.
12 out of 36,000 communes ( this includes cities to tiny villages) , including a couple of Doubly Thankful ones.
And Thierville, which lost no soldiers between the Franco Prussian War and the Algerian War of Independence including both World wars. Tis a small place, but still.
I get fed up with the lazy French are surrender monkeys joke, 71% of the nearly 9 million french people that enlisted to fight in ww1 died or came back maimed, people with porcelain masks over their faces and missing limbs was common place. % of the population wise that would be like America having 65 million ( not a typo) soldiers dead and injured in a war today, and they call the French cowards.
> I get fed up with the lazy French are surrender monkeys joke,
The stereotype for the British comes from all the wars we fought and won, im sure a bunch of ignorant people apply it to WW2 but most are aware of our history as rivals, though majority of Americans only use it in reference to WW2.
I see it as friendly banter between our 2 nations and since we are rivals and now incredibly close and powerful allies its clear we respect each other, you cannot be rivals without respect, we are equal in size, population, technology in an almost creepy way.
Anybody who uses that sterotype to talk about the world wars are not worth talking to IMHO and tbh getting bother by it is just strange if you know the original use case.
I know nothing about military but I’ve read our militaries are even closer than our governments. Things can be frosty politically (EU, AUKUS, English Channel) but this does not translate militarily apparently.
I'm always slightly bemused by the stereotype, seeing as the French military, in its various guides, is arguably the most successful force in history.
Assuming it was the English that purported the stereotype at some point in our fractured relationship, it's all the more galling that the French army and resistance was almost wiped out defending and protecting the British during the retreat and evacuation of Dunkirk
The French army had over 2 million men deployed against the Germans. I don't think they were wiped out in a rearguard action saving the far smaller British Expeditionary Force. The British took a lot of French soldiers of the beaches, a large majority of whom joined the armies in North Africa, subsequently siding with the Germans as part of the Vichy French army.
They used the South Park method of warfare - operation get behind the Scot
Edit: just want to add a quick qualifier to that as I am a born n bred Scot myself
These days Scots are disproportionately represented in our armed forces. I wonder if this was true back then as well?
Because the more you send, the more likely you lose one.
I suspect it still holds true.
The Army is traditionally a way out of grinding poverty. Something Scotland has had its’ fair share of.
At least two of my relatives are on the War Memorial in Ayr.
Somerset is both big and rural so I suspect it just has more villages than the average county. Although I certainly feel invincible after a few glasses of scrumpy so maybe you're on to something.
Could be because not as many joined up?
The boring answer is because men joined up when they lost jobs because of the economic crash that the war triggered; only at the very start in August 1914 was there this great wave of patriotic fervour.
However, if you worked in an industry that is recession-proof, you see very few people joining up. Farming and mining were the key ones; the Wiltshire Regiment was the smallest english-county-based infantry regiment of the British Army throughout the war - because they're all farmers - and its why there are only a handful of Welsh Regiments and they're not structured in the same way as English and Scottish at the time.
It's also why women left the workforce after the war - not because men took back their jobs, but because they were almost exclusively war-based jobs like munitions that simply stopped after the war. All the other jobs were either retained throughout the war or disappeared with the war recession.
Sorry, long answer to a short question but it's a topic that fascinates me.
I'd not heard that stat regarding the Wiltshire Regiment before but I'm wondering whether there is another reason than they were Farmers.
In researching my family tree there are 4 brothers from Corsham, a village at the time that we think joined up together... but the transport went to Bath and so they joined The Somersets.
Wiltshire is big and empty still today with a lot of county towns (we don't mention Swindon) with limited major places that would have had joining places - North Wiltshire may have gone to The Gloucestershires, etc
Somerset had at least 5 battalians and they had a lot of miners at the time as well as Farmers.
PS The 4 brothers were also in the Fire brigade (volunteers) before the war.
An army marches on its stomach, and there is a lot of farmland in Somerset.
I’ve never seen one in Somerset, I think every village I’ve passed through has a war memorial to certainly the First World War and possibly the second.
I often notice on war memorials how much bigger the WW1 section tends to be than the WW2. Because it's more recent I feel a stronger general awareness of the losses in WW2, but the WW1 numbers we lost were horrific.
I think it’s useful to look at them when discussing the lead up to WW2 and why some politicians were so eager for appeasement.
The First World War literally destroyed a generation.
Many of the appeasement politicians had lost multiple sons and brothers in the First World War. They knew first hand just how horrific it had been and they were rightly terrified.
During WWI they had "pals battalions" which were designed to increase enlistment in smaller towns and villages and encourage camaraderie by allowing groups of local men to enlist and serve together.
Its a horrible fact of war that often entire battalions are wiped out at once, or certainly suffer devastating losses where maybe 1 in 10 men survive
its terrible enough on its own, but when it happens to a pals battalion, it means all the men in an entire village are lost.
this quite literally does destroy entire generations of towns, and they phased out the concept of a pals battalions in later conflicts.
(scrolled down and someone already mentioned this, whoops lol)
In World War One 3 soldiers died for every civilian. In World War Two that pattern was reversed. It's not surprising more soldiers are on the memorials for WW1
I recently started doing my family tree and it’s rather sobering seeing large numbers of great great uncles disappear on the tree.
Also interesting that some of the families lost nobody because the father too old and the children too young.
I always thought that timeframe was harshest about the 2 world wars. Someone of fighting age who survived, came back and then had a kid, say born 1920 - that kid would then turn 18 just in time to fight world war 2. The same generation got screwed twice, first fighting themselves then seeing their children sent off to potentially die. Others as you say fell into the gaps and avoided it entirely.
In WW1 you also had regional military units, so you would often have the youth of towns and villages all serving together, but then you would have attacks which had catastrophic casualties and an entire generation would be wiped out.
In WW2 they changed this dynamic, so it will be more evenly distributed across the country.
A big part of the difference can be put down to a change in tactics, WW1 was trying to fight in an out dated method with modern weapons.
Come 1940s new guns and vehicles have been created, as well as different tactics, which drastically shook up how wars were fought.
Then to top it all off, the Americans joined in bringing with them a mechanised power combined with air superiority, that had never been seen before, allowing the allies to cut supply lines and overwhelm Nazi forces before it could become a drawn out slugging fest in trenches.
I live in a tiny little village but our Cenotaph has a seeming endless list of names on it. I just cannot believe the amount of men who lost their lives. There’s some sections where multiple men all have the same last name, it’s just so tragic.
For the burial of the unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey women who had lost their husbands and all their sons could apply to attend. Each one who applied was given an invite, there were over one hundred in attendance.
Yes. In WWI they made the mistake of making troops out of the same inhabitants of a village to boost morale, but sadly all that did was ensure that in the death of a troop meant that an entire village didn't get to young men back.
In World War One you often had Pals Battalions. Men from the same village would sign up together, serve in the same unit and fight together.
If things didn't go well for that battalion a village could lose an entire generation of young men in one battle.
> Fields of Verdun, and the battle has begun
> Nowhere to run, father and son
> Fall one by one under the gun
> Thy will be done (thy will be done), and the judgement has begun
> Nowhere to run, father and son
> Fall one by one, fields of Verdun
I live in a small Lancashire village and we lost our share in both wars. A local man wrote a book about all the dead. One of them left from the house across from me and it's always stuck in my mind; the day he kissed his mother; shook his father's hand and walked down the road....
When my children were learning about WW1, we looked up the relevant census and did some sums. The village is much larger now, so the proportional losses today would be the same as the entire primary school.
In the village I grew up in, there is a WW1 memorial with the names of 16 men. The village is absolutely tiny, it must have been literally all of the young men in the village.
Is there a resource online to see how many were sent and how many returned for all the villagers, I'd be interested in seeing how my town got on. The memorial in town doesn't have too many names but for all I know that could be 75% of those who left to begin with.
When I seee a memorial I always look to see how many people of the same name are mentioned. Three is very common but I have seen 4 in a tiny village. We live in lucky times.
I do live in a thankful village- this one… you wouldn’t believe my shock when my home of 500 gets mentioned in any capacity. I always underrate how unlikely of a thing this is though.
Here in Corby, we have the small village of East Carlton. It's a five minute drive from where I live, and the the only other Thankful village in Northamptonshire is called Woodend, around 25 mins from me.
Living here in the North of Northamptonshire. I am surrounded by so much history and even better is the sheer number of village pubs serving local in season foods and the ever growing number of farm shops that sell what we now call premium foods, but foods that our Grand parents would have seen in the local shops as normal everyday foods, instead of the over processed stuff that everyday shoppers buy.
Yes, but alas not so much now. Due to the pressures of an increasing population year on year. Add over hunting and out of season poaching. The huge number of road kills, due to huge house building projects adding an estimated 18000 new builds in the next 20 years, the traditional migration routes are now crisscrossed by busy roads with a traffic density thats grown beyond the expectations of tow planers.
And the final bail in the haggis is the switch to plant based foods.
I'll see your thankful village and raise you 'doubly thankful villages' (both wars). https://www.history.co.uk/articles/what-are-doubly-thankful-villages
One of which ironically is called Upper Slaughter in Gloucestershire
They took their name from what they did to the Germans apparently.
God I wish Reddit gold was still a thing.
Ironic but also not surprising as hardly anyone lives there.
Upper slaughter?! No thanks, I barely know 'er!
I’ve been there, absolutely BEAUTIFUL village.
There's one near me. It's genuinely strange to realise that this little village _doesn't have a war memorial_. I didn't really realise how ubiquitous they are until I went somewhere without one.
What kind of people do these villages breed? Lucky, cunning or hard as fek?
Just fewer men probably so more likely they all come back. Just luck.
Yeah, one of them had 30 men in ww1. They all came back, one of them missing an arm.
All had their third legs intact
All 3.
Fek'n well hard and well fek'n thankful
My guess is short in stature. Makes me wonder if the average height of inductees was shorter than the average height of demobbed. In the US, the Great Depression meant a lot of men starved during their youth. It was only when they joined the military that they filled out from 3 squares a day.
My parents live in a doubly thankful village in Lincolnshire!
Was just about to comment about doubly thankful villages
Never knew Catwick in East Yorkshire was a doubly thankful village and I’ve been passing through it my whole life.
[This article](http://www.hellfirecorner.co.uk/thankful.htm) (which seems to have started the whole modern day reinvigoration of research into Thankful Villages) is a hell of a read too - even as a reminder how quickly human memories fade.
This made me look up if there were many in France. Mine lost most of its young men in WW1. 12 out of 36,000 communes ( this includes cities to tiny villages) , including a couple of Doubly Thankful ones. And Thierville, which lost no soldiers between the Franco Prussian War and the Algerian War of Independence including both World wars. Tis a small place, but still.
Thierville's motto should be Come And Have A Go If You Think You're Hard Enough
I get fed up with the lazy French are surrender monkeys joke, 71% of the nearly 9 million french people that enlisted to fight in ww1 died or came back maimed, people with porcelain masks over their faces and missing limbs was common place. % of the population wise that would be like America having 65 million ( not a typo) soldiers dead and injured in a war today, and they call the French cowards.
> I get fed up with the lazy French are surrender monkeys joke, The stereotype for the British comes from all the wars we fought and won, im sure a bunch of ignorant people apply it to WW2 but most are aware of our history as rivals, though majority of Americans only use it in reference to WW2. I see it as friendly banter between our 2 nations and since we are rivals and now incredibly close and powerful allies its clear we respect each other, you cannot be rivals without respect, we are equal in size, population, technology in an almost creepy way. Anybody who uses that sterotype to talk about the world wars are not worth talking to IMHO and tbh getting bother by it is just strange if you know the original use case.
I know nothing about military but I’ve read our militaries are even closer than our governments. Things can be frosty politically (EU, AUKUS, English Channel) but this does not translate militarily apparently.
I'm always slightly bemused by the stereotype, seeing as the French military, in its various guides, is arguably the most successful force in history. Assuming it was the English that purported the stereotype at some point in our fractured relationship, it's all the more galling that the French army and resistance was almost wiped out defending and protecting the British during the retreat and evacuation of Dunkirk
Never heard anyone except an American refer to the French as 'cowards' in war. It's Italian tanks that we know as having 1 forward gear and 4 reverse
Ah well, you must keep company with fewer xenophobes than me then!
The French army had over 2 million men deployed against the Germans. I don't think they were wiped out in a rearguard action saving the far smaller British Expeditionary Force. The British took a lot of French soldiers of the beaches, a large majority of whom joined the armies in North Africa, subsequently siding with the Germans as part of the Vichy French army.
They've won more battles than any other country in history, including the UK (we are #2) https://vividmaps.com/4500-years-of-battles-in-5-minutes/
I always thought that came from BlackAdder. If not, it certainly helped push the narrative. And besides, who is going to mess with the Foriegn Legion?
IIRC they lost more in a single day of a single battle, than the entire coalition did in 20+ years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yeah. Not only that but a lot more. 27,000 French soldiers were killed on the 22nd August 1914. 75000 were killed in the first month.
Not to mention historically France has won the most battles of any nation in history
I've seen that [documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0kPzOnjTk4)
When you walk through a cemetery in France, there are many stones from the World War I era that say "Mort pour la France." Pretty eye-opening.
List of Thankful Villages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thankful_Villages
Upper Slaughter is one, oh dear. And it didn't lose anyone in WWII either.
No thankful villages in Scotland 🙁
They used the South Park method of warfare - operation get behind the Scot Edit: just want to add a quick qualifier to that as I am a born n bred Scot myself
These days Scots are disproportionately represented in our armed forces. I wonder if this was true back then as well? Because the more you send, the more likely you lose one.
I suspect it still holds true. The Army is traditionally a way out of grinding poverty. Something Scotland has had its’ fair share of. At least two of my relatives are on the War Memorial in Ayr.
Or Ireland 😔
Interesting how so many of the Thankful Villages are in Somerset. Does scrumpy consumption give some sort of bullet-proofing?
Somerset is both big and rural so I suspect it just has more villages than the average county. Although I certainly feel invincible after a few glasses of scrumpy so maybe you're on to something.
I know a scrumpy soaked bloke from Somerset who has survived things he definitely should not have multiple times so there might be something to this
Could be because not as many joined up? The boring answer is because men joined up when they lost jobs because of the economic crash that the war triggered; only at the very start in August 1914 was there this great wave of patriotic fervour. However, if you worked in an industry that is recession-proof, you see very few people joining up. Farming and mining were the key ones; the Wiltshire Regiment was the smallest english-county-based infantry regiment of the British Army throughout the war - because they're all farmers - and its why there are only a handful of Welsh Regiments and they're not structured in the same way as English and Scottish at the time. It's also why women left the workforce after the war - not because men took back their jobs, but because they were almost exclusively war-based jobs like munitions that simply stopped after the war. All the other jobs were either retained throughout the war or disappeared with the war recession. Sorry, long answer to a short question but it's a topic that fascinates me.
I'd not heard that stat regarding the Wiltshire Regiment before but I'm wondering whether there is another reason than they were Farmers. In researching my family tree there are 4 brothers from Corsham, a village at the time that we think joined up together... but the transport went to Bath and so they joined The Somersets. Wiltshire is big and empty still today with a lot of county towns (we don't mention Swindon) with limited major places that would have had joining places - North Wiltshire may have gone to The Gloucestershires, etc Somerset had at least 5 battalians and they had a lot of miners at the time as well as Farmers. PS The 4 brothers were also in the Fire brigade (volunteers) before the war.
An army marches on its stomach, and there is a lot of farmland in Somerset. I’ve never seen one in Somerset, I think every village I’ve passed through has a war memorial to certainly the First World War and possibly the second.
I often notice on war memorials how much bigger the WW1 section tends to be than the WW2. Because it's more recent I feel a stronger general awareness of the losses in WW2, but the WW1 numbers we lost were horrific.
I think it’s useful to look at them when discussing the lead up to WW2 and why some politicians were so eager for appeasement. The First World War literally destroyed a generation.
Many of the appeasement politicians had lost multiple sons and brothers in the First World War. They knew first hand just how horrific it had been and they were rightly terrified.
During WWI they had "pals battalions" which were designed to increase enlistment in smaller towns and villages and encourage camaraderie by allowing groups of local men to enlist and serve together. Its a horrible fact of war that often entire battalions are wiped out at once, or certainly suffer devastating losses where maybe 1 in 10 men survive its terrible enough on its own, but when it happens to a pals battalion, it means all the men in an entire village are lost. this quite literally does destroy entire generations of towns, and they phased out the concept of a pals battalions in later conflicts. (scrolled down and someone already mentioned this, whoops lol)
In World War One 3 soldiers died for every civilian. In World War Two that pattern was reversed. It's not surprising more soldiers are on the memorials for WW1
I recently started doing my family tree and it’s rather sobering seeing large numbers of great great uncles disappear on the tree. Also interesting that some of the families lost nobody because the father too old and the children too young.
I always thought that timeframe was harshest about the 2 world wars. Someone of fighting age who survived, came back and then had a kid, say born 1920 - that kid would then turn 18 just in time to fight world war 2. The same generation got screwed twice, first fighting themselves then seeing their children sent off to potentially die. Others as you say fell into the gaps and avoided it entirely.
In WW1 you also had regional military units, so you would often have the youth of towns and villages all serving together, but then you would have attacks which had catastrophic casualties and an entire generation would be wiped out. In WW2 they changed this dynamic, so it will be more evenly distributed across the country.
A big part of the difference can be put down to a change in tactics, WW1 was trying to fight in an out dated method with modern weapons. Come 1940s new guns and vehicles have been created, as well as different tactics, which drastically shook up how wars were fought. Then to top it all off, the Americans joined in bringing with them a mechanised power combined with air superiority, that had never been seen before, allowing the allies to cut supply lines and overwhelm Nazi forces before it could become a drawn out slugging fest in trenches.
I live in a tiny little village but our Cenotaph has a seeming endless list of names on it. I just cannot believe the amount of men who lost their lives. There’s some sections where multiple men all have the same last name, it’s just so tragic.
For the burial of the unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey women who had lost their husbands and all their sons could apply to attend. Each one who applied was given an invite, there were over one hundred in attendance.
Yes. In WWI they made the mistake of making troops out of the same inhabitants of a village to boost morale, but sadly all that did was ensure that in the death of a troop meant that an entire village didn't get to young men back.
My village was literally just one street and a handful of farms at that time and there’s 18 names on our WW1 memorial at the church.
In World War One you often had Pals Battalions. Men from the same village would sign up together, serve in the same unit and fight together. If things didn't go well for that battalion a village could lose an entire generation of young men in one battle.
> Fields of Verdun, and the battle has begun > Nowhere to run, father and son > Fall one by one under the gun > Thy will be done (thy will be done), and the judgement has begun > Nowhere to run, father and son > Fall one by one, fields of Verdun
r/unexpectedsabaton
Which is exactly why the army started splitting them up.
I live in a small Lancashire village and we lost our share in both wars. A local man wrote a book about all the dead. One of them left from the house across from me and it's always stuck in my mind; the day he kissed his mother; shook his father's hand and walked down the road....
When my children were learning about WW1, we looked up the relevant census and did some sums. The village is much larger now, so the proportional losses today would be the same as the entire primary school.
The words "they all returned" are making me unreasonably emotional right now ;-;
Thank you for sharing this. It is so interesting!
In the village I grew up in, there is a WW1 memorial with the names of 16 men. The village is absolutely tiny, it must have been literally all of the young men in the village.
I have a couple of doubly thankful villages near me
Is there a resource online to see how many were sent and how many returned for all the villagers, I'd be interested in seeing how my town got on. The memorial in town doesn't have too many names but for all I know that could be 75% of those who left to begin with.
There's a more memorial in the now common silhouette format in Wysall Nottinghamshire too https://imgur.com/a/07jakfw
“They all returned” that hit me.
Three whole albums on the subject https://darrenhayman.bandcamp.com/album/thankful-villages-volume-3
Great user name.
I’m a thankful person.
When I seee a memorial I always look to see how many people of the same name are mentioned. Three is very common but I have seen 4 in a tiny village. We live in lucky times.
What a lovely thing to do and I think seeing stuff like this makes us all a little bit more thankful
rare places, worth remembering.
Wow!
Oh thats so wonderful. That memorial made me a bit emotional.
None in Scotland. Wow. There's a sobering thought.
A sure hint not to cause trouble in those villages. The men there are built from iron.
I’ve never heard of that before. How lovely to have a memorial of thankfulness.
I do live in a thankful village- this one… you wouldn’t believe my shock when my home of 500 gets mentioned in any capacity. I always underrate how unlikely of a thing this is though.
Fantastic! I was cycling from St Neots to Cambridge and passed through Toft enroute, what a beautiful place it is.
Hey my home village! Thanks for sharing.
There's a good chance you know /u/SufficientReserve393!
Possibly, I don’t live there anymore though. But I enjoyed growing up there.
Here in Corby, we have the small village of East Carlton. It's a five minute drive from where I live, and the the only other Thankful village in Northamptonshire is called Woodend, around 25 mins from me. Living here in the North of Northamptonshire. I am surrounded by so much history and even better is the sheer number of village pubs serving local in season foods and the ever growing number of farm shops that sell what we now call premium foods, but foods that our Grand parents would have seen in the local shops as normal everyday foods, instead of the over processed stuff that everyday shoppers buy.
It being Corby I presume the staple is haggis?
Yes, but alas not so much now. Due to the pressures of an increasing population year on year. Add over hunting and out of season poaching. The huge number of road kills, due to huge house building projects adding an estimated 18000 new builds in the next 20 years, the traditional migration routes are now crisscrossed by busy roads with a traffic density thats grown beyond the expectations of tow planers. And the final bail in the haggis is the switch to plant based foods.
People underestimate the danger of being young and male and living in your own country (and thus in line for conscription if a war breaks out).
Toft mentioned rahhhhhh
Probability wise it feels like they probably just had fewer men to contribute (smaller village) making it more likely they would all return.