Who died protecting it

[IRON MAN]

Our flag flies because of the last breath of each soldier who died protecting it. The tombstone should not read casualties. It should read fatalities or died.

[BIGSHCLUNK]

    I have a cousin on the "wall"     Salute to them all ! 

[Cuda Cody]

      

[JS29]

 

[Racer57]

My Uncle received the Legion of Merit for his actions on Guadalcanal. He took these pictures.

[anlauto]

    to all those that have served.

I'm surprised less lives were lost in the first two wars combined, then in the last war listed... sad really that so many lives are still being lost 

[7E-Bodies]

My great uncle. KIA WWI, 11 OCT 1918, France, age 25. A farm kid from our hometown of Nokomis, IL.
More than a "long weekend" indeed. Irish immigrants don't forget the cost. Ever.

[Racer57]

  to all those that have served.

I'm surprised less lives were lost in the first two wars combined, then in the last war listed... sad really that so many lives are still being lost 

I'm not sure what you mean ? You think more US Soldiers lives were lost in current war than WW1 and WW2 combined ?

[1 Wild R/T]

  to all those that have served.

I'm surprised less lives were lost in the first two wars combined, then in the last war listed... sad really that so many lives are still being lost 

I'm not sure what you mean ? You think more US Soldiers lives were lost in current war than WW1 and WW2 combined ?

I think he's referring to the revolutionary war & the war of 1812.....    Sorry, muskets aren't the same as bolt action or semi automatic rifles....  And how many died in those conflicts that didn't get recorded...

Consider Vietnam was about ten years & more than 58K soldiers were killed... Our involvement in the Middle East is hovering close to 20 years  & a little over 7000 soldiers killed... Sure any deaths are a tragedy but honestly the safety of our troops as improved dramatically... 

[HP2]

I also read that as the first two wars, not the two world wars.

[anlauto]

Sorry to mislead anyone....I did mean the first two wars listed on that list (revolutionary war & the war of 1812), I would have thought a lot more people would have lost their lives during those wars, then the most recent on going war (sorry...peace keeping effort) in the middle east.

I'm not a History buff at all, and I think that is the first time I've noticed a list like that put together, that's all.

One life lost is one too many 

[7E-Bodies]

No offense taken @anlauto
I sensed your point.

[b5cuda]

You're right about lower mortality rates, we get better at saving life with each war.  Maybe the only silver lining.  On my last deployment (2014) I was the hospital chaplain at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan.  We had a 99% survival rate.  If you arrived with a pulse, you probably left with a pulse.  Pretty amazing!

[JS29]

It started out as decoration day after the civil war. 

[HP2]

The large bore, low velocity wounds created by our first couple of centuries of warfare where often not immediately fatal but created so much surrounding tissue damage that the medical technology of the day could not easily deal with such catastrophic damage and the resulting infections. It wasn't until the Crimean War of the 1850s and Florence Nightingale's recognition of sanitary efforts to improve field medicine that battlefield triage actually began to improve. This didn't become standard training for medical teams until the 1880-90s around most of the globe.

Modern high velocity, small bore weapons, while still devastatingly deadly, also  tend to create very high wound rates, which tend to take additional combatants out of the fight to deal with wounded comrades. Which is also why I agree with Iron Man that the tombstone shown in the OP should read deaths and not casualties.