Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Memorial Day

My local news had a story about Memorial day and reported over 1,000,000 warriors had been killed in Americas wars. That figure seemed high to me. From Infoplease I found the following statistics:

America's Wars - Total

Military service during war - 42,348,460

Battle deaths - 651,008

Other deaths in service (theater) - 13,998

Other deaths in service (nontheater) - 525,256

Nonmortal woundings - 1,431,290

Living war veterans - 17,578,5004

Living veterans - 25,038,459


If one adds other deaths (nontheater) to battle deaths and other deaths (theater) the figure is indeed over 1 million, but that figure includes non-combat deaths. I regret so many have given there lives for our freedoms but am grateful for these fallen.