heard on Jeopardy last night. Beginning in 1776, the 1,000,000 soldier was killed in the line of duty on 9/4/51. No idea what their sources were but its something to think about while waiting for the Squadron flyer to arrive.
Craig
Not inconceivable. Remember that the US Civil war killed off some- where around 500-650,000 AMERICANS. The figure always in- cludes the southern forces since they were still AMERICANS after the war.
This tends to make the figure seem to inflate at times. We also lost somewhere around 150K troops during WWI. The trench war- fare was nasty on troop losses, and I usually see the troops lost to the Influenza outbreak at the end of the war included in this fig- ure as well.
Because it's a person's opinion that matters when adding deaths into this number, and it's very hard to verify some of the data (Ie: did the soldier from the Revolutionary War die or simply disappear during the battle?) I don't like to use numbers like this.
If you want to say APROXIMATELY 1M troops have died by that date, Okay, I'll go along with that. But to say that EXACTLY 1M troops had died by that date, I'll have to argue. Just the historian in my talking. :) I'm sure that they're taking their data from a re- liable source. My first guess would be something like the VFW, American Legion, or the VA (Most likely it's a government source of one type or another).
Hope this helps!
-andy
"Drew Hill" wrote in news:1137797517.049476.133970 @g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
Does "line of duty" include only direct combat casualties, KIA and died of wounds or is it all causes? I would think that would make a difference as I understand disease took a lot of soldiers in the Civil War.
Frank
My GrandMother told me of taking a train from Harrisburg in late 1918 to go visit a relative. The train stopped in Indian Town Gap on the way. She noticed this long line of boxes stacked a couple deep on the platform and asked a soldier who had boarded the train what were the boxes. "Lady, those are caskets of soldiers who have died of the flu"! She was horrified and never forgot the experience.
Bill Shuey
Actually...I believe *more* died from disease/illness than from actual combat. Understandable, when such large numbers of men are put together in such large and dense groups. The vast majority of those soldiers, before the war, had probably never traveled more than 20 miles from home, nor been exposed to groups any bigger than a few dozen people.
plus the 1918 flu was a real mother. it attacked the young and healthy. there are several excellent books out now about it. i'll stay in the desert, you stay downwind...... (g)
Figures like that get racked and stacked pretty loosely according to whatever criteria the "racker and stacker" chooses to apply or in compiling the statistics or point trying to be made as well as how liberally one wants to interpret the criteria for Killed In Action and Died of Wounds. That's why I don't put all that much stock in the various "body count" statistics.
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