death "caused by military service"

[Claire64]

I feel I am asking a stupid question here ... but what was the reason for specifying that WW1 deaths that occurred in this country were as a result of that person's military service?

The ones I have come across have been post-war deaths in the years following the end of WW1.  I would guess that it was to do with money paid out or pensions?  I can't seem to find the answer.

[ShaunJ]

Do you mean for CWGC commemoration?

https://www.cwgc.org/media/0awj5vti/policy-eligibility-criteria-for-commemoration_march21.pdf

See section 5, in particular para 5.1

[Andy J2022]

I'm not clear if you are talking about what appears on death certificates or just within the service documents. Certainly if it's the latter, pensions will be the main reason that the cause of death was attributed to the man's service. It's worth remembering that from 1916 the civilian Ministry of Pensions was responsible for administering the pensions of all ex servicemen who fought in the war and as a civilian organisation they wouldn't necessarily have had access to all the military documentation relating to a soldier, and possibly only received his discharge medical paperwork.
However if you are referring to a death certificate, obviously a cause of death has to be included, and in normal circumstances a violent or otherwise unexplained death would need a coroner's inquest to determine how the person came to die. Clearly an inquest was not appropriate for a death where the medical cause could be certified as resulting from the man's war service.

[Claire64]

Thank you.

I hadn't thought about the CWGC eligibility.

Two documents I have seen over the last couple of weeks were provided by two different War Hospitals and they specifically stated that death was caused by Military Service.

One was a case of meningitis; this man died seven weeks after enlisting and two days after his transfer to the R.F.C. in 1918.  I presume that this was because it had been established early on in the war that cases of meningitis increased due to the close proximity of lots of men in barracks etc.

The other was a man who came back from France after being gassed and shot, and spent the remaining three years "at home" before being discharged due to ill health in 1919.  He died at a War Hospital in 1920 of nephritis, again caused by Military Service.