Utgardloki , In the initial months of WW1 the rate of Officers casualties was high and not only among German officers . you must remember that in the Battle of the Frontiers ,German,French and at lesser degree British officers conducted their men to the fight with the sword in a hand and the pistol in the other . being highly visibles and exposing much . respect to past wars , in the Franco Prussian War the rate of casualties for the Prussian Germans was high but during the FP War the Armies of both contenders were much less numerous than those of WW1 . At the Battle of Spichern by case ,the 6th August 1870 ,20000 Germans clashed with 25000 French and fight all the day , The Germans won with 4000 casualties among these 490 dead . In the early months of WW1 clashed Armies of hundred of thousand men and day after day . Once the Front become static and full of trenches and refuges the rate of casualties lowered except during the assaults or defence against the assaults of the enemy . Erich Maria Remarque wrote in his book Return that in the last formation of his unit once in Germany ,First Leutnant Hehl walked in front of the Company and after him the ghosts of his predecessors . Bentick, Raedecke, Buttner, Moeller and two more ,Six company chiefs in two years .