If you 'know' that, you're wrong. Frankly, this is a classist prejudice with no basis in fact. My boarding school had 700 names on the memorial to WW1. Mostly

If you 'know' that, you're wrong. Frankly, this is a classist prejudice with no basis in fact. My boarding school had 700 names on the memorial to WW1. Mostly junior officers: 200 captains and 340 lieutenants. That's out of a cohort of maybe 3500 old boys who were the right age for the front: 20%. Eton itself says 1200 died and 5600 served. They all volunteered, and the 18 year olds were mostly made second Lieutenants, and the second Lieutenant's job was to climb out of the trench first and shout 'follow me' and to move around the battlefield looking after his men. So they did, and they died in huge numbers. The BBC says 12% of the British army's non-commissioned soldiers were killed during the war, compared with 17% of its officers. The actual Prime Minister during the way, Asquith lost a son. Andrew Bonar Law (PM in the 1920s) lost two. Anthony Eden (PM in the 50s) lost two brothers and another brother was badly wounded.