My new job at a military museum has me reading a lot of war stories. As you might imagine, military service is risky, risky business. But not everyone who dies does so in glorious, straightforward, “heroic” ways fighting the enemy. Sometimes a guy will screw up and get himself killed by his own mistake. Other times, an accident, totally unrelated to the fighting, kills the guy. And other times, a soldier’s own buddy will accidentally kill him/her.
Based on what I see in movies, someone – the victim’s commanding officer, I assume – writes a letter to the next of kin expressing his/her sadness and the nation’s gratitude. I also assume that most of the time the letter-writer will tell the n-o-k how the soldier died. If the soldier died in dubious circumstances (like the ways described in the first paragraph), do they mention that in the letter? If not, do they just pile on the BS to make everyone feel good, even if it’s not true? Does the US military have an actual policy on how these things are handled?
In the old days it was considered the thing to do. Now it would be called a cover up.
Used to be a telegram was sent and it was up to the commander to send a letter at a later time. Now there are casuality notification teams that are trained to make notications in person. The traditional BS is not allowed.
Here is an article from a few years ago about a notification team. It is taking forever to load on my computer so I am not sure how much detail it goes into. I could only read the first page.
I know that the British and Empire forces in WWI employed a number of polite euphemisms for the sort of situations you describe.
“Died of Wounds” was, IIRC, a euphemism for “Shot by firing squad” (typically for cowardice or a number of other things that we would recognise as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) or “Dishonoured Officer shot themselves” (instead of facing a Court Martial for Conduct Unbecoming or Cowardice or something equally disastrous by Edwardian standards), and “Died/Fell whilst facing the Enemy” was a handy catch-all for things like “Held a grenade too long”, “accidentally shelled by our own artillery”, and incidents that today tend to be called “Friendly Fire” or “Blue-on-Blue”.
“Killed in Action” was used for various but perfectly honourable “He’s dead, Jim” scenarios where the specific circumstances were unknown (or not especially remarkable by combat standards) but the soldier in question had still died (for example, as part of an attack during an offensive).
Having said all that, I don’t believe there was any hard and fast Official Policy on the subject, besides the fact it was all taken Very Seriously (and rightfully so, IMHO).
As Loach says, back then coming up with polite euphemisms or glossing over the details of military deaths in unfortunate and not directly enemy-caused circumstances was acknowledged as The Right Thing To Do to.
Incidentally, the family of every soldier who died in WWI received a Memorial Plaque and Scroll, along with a Letter of Condolence from King Edward VII, which as I said earlier, was because the whole subject of soldiers dying whilst on military service was indeed taken Very Seriously, especially during WWI.
I hope you don’t mean to say that that was the only use of “died of wounds”, because it also meant exactly that, i. e. died of wounds suffered on the battlefield but after having been removed for treatment.
Sorry, yes, I should have been clearer on that point; ie that “Died of wounds” didn’t necessarily only mean “Injured in combat and died later from the injuries”.
This is all the more remarkable because Edward VII died in 1910, four years before the war even started.
In Jarhead, his fictionalized (and very readable) account of the First Gulf War, former Marine sniper Anthony Swofford didn’t talk about letters to next of kin. He did mention, however, that Pentagon policy is to send all of a fallen soldier’s effects back home. Accordingly, before combat the Marines in his platoon would purge their baggage of any porn, condoms, illicit substances, etc.
That’s what I get for trying to write a serious response here about one issue whilst posting on another board helping someone decipher the “ER” and other service markings on their Edwardian vintage service revolver. :smack:
