Definition of "cannon fodder" []

• Soldiers, sailors, or other military personnel regarded as likely to be killed or wounded in combat. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Consider above all that the year 1914 set up whole armies of so-called volunteers who, thanks to the criminal unscrupulousness of our parliamentary good-for-nothings, had received no adequate peacetime training, and thus became helpless cannon fodder at the mercy of the enemy."