Wastage was a British term used during the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. The term adapted Carl von Clausewitz's concept of
Verbrauch which, akin to wastage, also means the consumption of losses in terms of men, materials, and territories. It was used to describe the losses from those killed, injured, or from the loss of resources experienced during the war either when an attack advanced or when men died holding a defensive position. The British military also used the term to describe weapons left on the battlefield by fallen soldiers. On the "quietest days" of the war, the British lost an approximate average of 7,000 men killed and wounded per day to wastage.
From 1915, British recruitment officials began to target certain sectors of the public, namely younger unmarried working-class men, for enlistment to fill quotas of the expected wastage losses in battles anticipated later in the war. This practice extended to include conscripts taken to fill the wastage recruitment quotas beginning in 1916.
References
World War I
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