Mortality of first world war military personnel: comparison of two military cohorts.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To identify the impact of the first world war on the lifespan of participating military personnel (including in veterans who survived the war).

Design

Comparison of two cohorts of military personnel, followed to death.

Setting

Military personnel leaving New Zealand to participate in the first world war.

Participants

From a dataset of the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces, we randomly selected participants who embarked on troopships in 1914 and a comparison non-combat cohort who departed on troopships in late 1918 (350 in each group).

Main outcome measures

Lifespan based on dates of birth and death from a range of sources (such as individual military files and an official database of birth and death records).

Results

A quarter of the 1914

SUBMITTER: Wilson N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4266957 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature