In the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet (which isn’t exactly known for thorough research or critical thinking, so I’m taking these figures with a grain of salt) I read today that 464 U.S. soldiers have died in the latest war in Iraq. 317 of them died to enemy fire. What happened to the other 147? Sure, accidents happen, scorpions sting, diseases spread, but almost a third of the total body count? It just doesn’t sound likely to me. So, what happened to them?
Helicopter crashes?
Do they count booby traps, mines and other “indirect” casualties as ‘enemy fire’?
Well, it’s not like the pre-20th Century when the vast majority of soldiers died from, essentially, diarrhea.
But yes - accidents do happen. Vehicles overturn, aircraft crash, people fall into ditches and drown… in Iraq you can also have heatstroke pretty easily in the summertime if you aren’t careful. I don’t know if stepping on a landmine counts as “enemy fire” or “accident”. And, there’s the ever-popular “friendly fire” problem. I wouldn’t be surprised if there had been at least one suicide or murder, given the sheer number of people we have over there.
Since the Iraqis didn’t put up much resistance, I’m not surprised a high proprotion of deaths due to “other than enemy fire”. If the Iraqis had dug in and resisted more there might have been more deaths on our side due to bullets (and more on theirs)
In peacetime, the most common ways (American) soldiers die are motor accidents, drownings and suicides.
In wartime, there are of course additional hazards, but these three remain. In fact the stress of war combined with high-powered vehicles make traffic accidents go up by quite a bit.
During some weeks in Vietnam, more GIs were killed in vehicle accidents than through something more dramatic.
I would suppose drownings are way down.
Suicides are most certainly up. Depression plus weapons can make an otherwise mild bout of the blues deadly.
I hope that helps.
BBC News: Timeline: US losses in Iraq [24 December 2003]: lists causes of death. Lots of road accidents.
“I would suppose drownings are way down.”
I would not disagree with that.
People in the military die from the same things as civilians - accidents.
Most of military activity in a war zone is the movement of large numbers of people and the storage and transportation of goods. Such activities always result in accidents.
In addition there are always a certain number of accidental shooting and even an occasional murder.
I don’t recall which one for sure, but either Korea or Vietnam was the first US war in which accident casulaties didn’t outnumber battle casualties by a substantial number.
Actually, it was WWII.
Disease and accidents, especially accidents in the 20th century. When they were planning for the proposed invasion of Japan in WWII, I believe they estimated that the number of non combat deaths (falling off a ladder, hit by a truck and so on) of people supporting the invasion would actually equal the number of combat deaths.
One thing that has to be accounted for is that there are about 6 times as many people in the support groups as there are in combat groups. And in actual combat at most about 2/3 of the available people are actually exposed to it at any one time.
How quickly we all forget.
There have been at least two murders and eleven suicides.
I’m pretty sure most Civil War deaths were from sickness rather than actual battle. It could be that some of the sickness was brought on by getting shot , like a bullet wound that was infected. A lot of POWs died from various diseases like TB and other bugs.
I think one really large cause of fatalities in the Civil War was that the medical profession had anesthetics but had not yet embraced antiseptic procedures. They could do quite deep and extensive surgery using anesthetics and so carried infection into the interior of the body by disregarding cleanliness.
I remembered the fragging episode in the Middle East, but didn’t mention it because I wasn’t sure if it was during the declared Iraq hostilities or just before it.