Memorial Day honors those killed in service to the nation

Published 7:00 am Sunday, May 28, 2023

Medical personnel – including female U.S. Army nurses – of the 8225th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) with a H-13 helicopter in Korea in 1951.

Memorial Day honors the estimated 1 million soldiers and sailors who have died in service to their country in the nearly 250 years since Americans fought to win their freedom from King George III of Britain.

The number killed in U.S. wars and conflicts since differs, with many attempts to record the toll of war.

The Department of Defense keeps the official count of those killed in the Defense Casualty Analysis System.

The best estimate is that just over 1 million soldiers and sailors have died in service to their country from the “shot heard round the world” by Minutemen on the Lexington Green in 1775 to the latest deaths in the 22-year-old “war on terror” following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in suburban Washington, D.C.

Even that death count is politically charged.

The Pentagon count does not include the estimated 300,000 or more Americans killed in the Civil War while serving with Confederate forces.

Many totals of American Civil War dead comingle the casualties as a national fratricide. But as combatants who took arms up against the United States, the rebels do not appear in official Department of Defense casualty totals.

The first American soldiers counted are the estimated 4,435 who died in the Revolutionary War, beginning in 1775.

Unlike later wars, there is no breakout of how many died in direct combat and how many were killed in other circumstances. Estimates on the number of those with “wounds not mortal” are recorded, but not the total number of troops fighting.

With the War of 1812, the nation having been founded 36 years before, troop estimates appear. Of the 286,730 Americans who served, some 2,260 died.

The largest number are the 405,399 who died in World War II.

The Civil War killed over 600,000 on Union and Confederate sides, but the Pentagon counts only Union killed of 364,511. Confederates killed in the war are considered enemy combatants fighting the United States.

About 7,000 have died in the combined “war on terror” operations that began in 2001 and continue today.

Wars covered in the Pentagon records include the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam Conflict, and the Persian Gulf War, which included Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm.

Military operations covered in casualty totals also include the many Pentagon named “operations” going back to the attempt to free American hostages held by Iranian Revolutionaries in 1979. The list includes the Iranian Hostage Rescue Mission; Lebanon Peacekeeping; Urgent Fury in Grenada; Just Cause in Panama; Restore Hope in Somalia; Uphold Democracy in Haiti; Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF); Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF); Operation New Dawn (OND); Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR); and Operation Freedom’s Sentinel (OFS).

Women have been among those who made the ultimate sacrifice. In World War II, 432 women – primarily American military medical personnel in the Pacific theater of operations – were killed in the line of service. Another 88 were taken as Prisoners of War.

Until recently, women were rarely allowed to serve in combat areas, with the exception of nurses. In the Korean War, women accounted for two of the 36,574 active duty service members killed. The number rose to 8 in the Vietnam War out of 58,225. In Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, women accounted for 15 of the 383 killed.

President Harry Truman formally integrated women into the U.S. Armed Forces, ending most distinctions of units and corps by gender. Today, women qualify for all roles, including high-risk service such as combat pilots and Navy SEALs.

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