Tick-marks

[pecunium]

Sometime this week we pass another milestone.

It happens for all of us, someday, we move from the rolls of the quick to the roster of the dead.

But, at some point this week, or, at the latest, next, 2,000 people in the military will have died in Iraq.

Two-thousand. A drop in the bucket which was Vietnam. Nothing as compared to WW2, and almost trivial when one thinks of the Civil War (Antietam had 3,600 dead. Some 17,000 wounded. From of a total of 93,000 engaged, all in an afternnon; for one battle. Ponder that. We have only half again that many troops on the ground in Iraq right now, imagine almost one-third of them were hors de combat tomorrow), but still, that's a lot of dead.

More than Katrina (so far), almost as many as died on That Tuesday.

Each of them with families, friends, lovers.

Each of them cut short. The kids, the old men (at least one of them was in his early fifties), all of them expected to have years past these, most could count on decades. What did we lose when they died?

Yes, dying is part of the deal. When one joins the Army one promises to let the Gov't send one to places where other people will try to kill you. Seems only fair, as you get to try and kill them. That part of it doesn't bother me. We each made a choice, and some of us have to pay the piper for the right to dance.

But these deaths, they touch me. These are my deaths. These are my comrades, God forbid, they are my friends. One of that list came from my unit. Some of them died in places I was, or with unit I was serving with.

Veterans' day is coming, which for me isn't Veterans', but rather Armistice Day, when the world hoped to do without war again, and remembered the horrible price paid, in blood, and youth (for the death of an age, or perhaps several ages, came in the trenches, a loss of innocence we thought we'd managed to gain; at horrid price, in Viet-nam, but seem to have forgotten, like the mythic regaining of virgnity after a time of abstinence).

I don't ask that I be sent to heroic wars, nor even clean wars. I only ask that the cause be just, as Shakespeare put it in Henry V.

WILLIAMS
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle; for how can they
charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it
will be a black matter for the king that led them to
it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of
subjection.


We are a democratic republic, we have no King to fob the guilt onto, the burden for those who fall in unjust wars rests on all of us.

When the number ticks, think of that, you may, like me, decide to empty a glass. I'll be doing it for absent friends, some of you will do it for memories sake, some of us ought to be doing it for the brief, nepenthic, relief it gives.

Comments

[pindar.livejournal.com]

It is an occupational hazard. About a year out of Sandhurst a friend of mine was killed. She was an RE officer and was the unfortunate victim of a training accident. The first time I dealt with death up close was at her funeral when I commanded the firing party. The following year I was there as 3 acquaintances were buried, 2 who were killed in the asme accident as their Lynx flew into power lines over Bosnia that weren't marked on the map.

You can't expect to do this job and not loose friends. Those outside the armed forces (in the UK at least) can't understand our macabre humour and why we can laugh about these things. I think our tolerance is greater than yours for seeing our servicemen come home dead and wounded. The last true "balanced" battle we fought was the Falklands. We came within a hair's breath of loosing. It was brutal, it was conventional, and we lost officers like Lt Col "H" Jones of 3 Para when he stormed a machine gun implacement that turned the battle of Mt Tumbledown in the para's favour. Now war has become more push-button and we consider the loss of a couple of men great. Frankly, it isn't. Sad as it may be if we are to engage in any military operation we must expect losses and we must brace ourselves for the human cost. Even in peace-keeping operations, an area where we British lead the world, we accept that the mission entails men on the ground in harms way (the Clinton-esque approach of strategic bombing proved an utter failure in Kosovo because he was not prepapred to dominate the ground by putting soldiers on it giving the Serbs almost freedom of movement) and thus casualties.

As part of the understanding of the Concept of Operations element of the Combat Appreciation Model the questions I must ask (called the "7 Questions" surprisingly enough)include estimates on the resources (manpower, technical, logistical, and force) as well as potential casualties. If the estimated casualty levels are so high as to dwindle the 1 in 3 principle we have to look to another plan if one exists, otherwise if the objective is taking and/or holding vital ground, we have to push ahead and cross our fingers. Very rarely is the a viable ACoA when it comes to the Main Objective of a Mission Analysis, and if you have to push ahaead, you push ahead come what may. It's the name of our game.

I hear what you are saying, but you like I signed up knowing that our political masters could commit us to something that would lead to the loss of life. Sad as it is that is our lot I'm afraid.

[badger2305.livejournal.com]

the burden for those who fall in unjust wars rests on all of us.

And in such a time, when dissent is swiftly condemned, how do we hold ourselves accountable? Particularly those officials and public "servants" on whose word we went to war?

(I know you know - but the questions are real)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It depends.

What did one do? How much effort did one spend looking at the issues, when the choices were being made? Did one speak then?

How much complicit silence has been engaged in?

When speaking out is possible, did one?

Me, I've a mixed mind on this, as pindar said, this is part of the deal we make when we take the schilling. Our friends die. They die in training, they die in the field. I don't know anyone, not anyone; who's put in more than one tour, who doesn't know someone; and personally, who died in the service.

In thirteeen years I've got about a dozen dead acquaintances. A couple of them friends. You get thick-skinnned about it. You get a black sense of humor. Sometimes you drink too much. It goes with the territory.

What one does is what has always needed to be done, look to the cause, and look to the justification. If it's wrong, speak. If you think it right, speak.

If the situation changes, admit it, and tell people what changed, and how you came to your new opinion.

If they abuse you for it, that's the price. If enough people are willing to take the abuse, then the abusers will have to reconsider.

For examples, I offer Selma, Birmingham, and a host of other places were dissent wasn't merely shouted down, it was beaten down.

But the willingness to take the beating is what carried the day.

TK

[badger2305.livejournal.com]

Much agreement.

I sometimes think that a greater burden falls upon civilians to take responsibility for the actions of the Republic, if only because we are asking others to make the greatest sacrifice. Then I get worried about privileging any one perspective. (sigh)

In my own work (mostly inner-city organizing), I've tried to operate by the maxim often attributed to Burke, "all that is necessary for evil to prevail in the world is for good men to do nothing" - I've tried to do something, when I could, to make a difference.

Thank you for your thoughts. I appreciate them a great deal.

[ckd]

My family has had many folks in the armed forces. At present, my brother and one cousin are on active duty (Army and USMC respectively), and another cousin is activated Army Reserve. Of my father and his three brothers, three of the four are retired (two Army, one USMC). Yet we've been lucky, as these things go.

My father and uncle have photos of their Army flight school class. Most of the names that go with that photo are also carved on The Wall.

My brother, like our father before him, is a DUSTOFF pilot. Shortly after he arrived in Iraq, the news reported a helicopter crash, but we couldn't get more details. It wasn't his unit, but it was another air ambulance crew that had gone down. He's stationed in Germany now, but that doesn't make helicopter flying "safe".

[geekchick]

But, at some point this week, or, at the latest, next, 2,000 people in the military will have died in Iraq.

That day was today.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I know. It wasn't when I wrote it.

He was a SGT, from the 3ID, he died at Ft.. Hood, Killeen Texas, from wounds receieved about two-weeks ago.

TK

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, there were fewer than 2000 deaths in Vietnam after we had been there for two years.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

That depends on when you start counting, and how you choose to count.

According to Military Casualty info, the first year in which we recorded a death was 1957.

Lets just take the ramp up, and start in '62, where we had 16, and by '64 we had a total of 399.

But that's not the real issue, the real issue, if you want to talk rates is one of per capita. How many soldier, divided by how many dead (see above in re Antietam, where the fatalities were in the area of 3 percent, and the total casualties about 30).

We've cycled about 250,000 troops through (this is a back of the envelope calculation) and had about 2,000 killed [n.b. to those who say the numbers are being hidden with dead troops who don't die until they get out of theater being counted as some other sort of death, Number 2000 died in Killeen Texas, almost two-weeks after his injuries took place, but I digress].

That's a tad under the Antietam numbers.

We've also had some large number of combat related injuries. I think in the neighborhood of 20,000 (based on Purple Heart numbers) and some other number of Disease/Non-Battle Injuries, those are harder to detail, because some sideline one for a week, some get one sent all the way home.

Lets call it a rounded 40,000.

Which puts us in the Antietam range again.

How does that compare to Viet-nam in the first few years?

In 1961 JFK sent 100 men to Viet-nam. That number stayed fairly level for the next year and half, or so. So the 7 soldiers who were killed represented a fairly large percentage. I don't know how many Air Force personell were in support, but the 8 of them who got killed make in '61 can't have been trivial either.

In '62 the numbers went to 5,000 and the casualties fell, as a ratio, to 1 percent (53 dead in '62) but since those numbers were stable until the build up after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (and they didn't come into the country until the last half of '62, so we can, effectively double the percentage... which takes us back up to present levels), and '63 saw 118, and '64 saw 206 (which can pretty fairly be said not to be affected by the resolution, because it was passed in Nov.).

At peak, in '67, '68, the US had about 500,000 troops in country, and had 27,600 fatalities, which again seems to fall into the present ratio.

There are other factors, which affect the individual soldier's experience (how exposed to danger are they? In Viet-nam most of the regular risk was taken by front line troops, which is reflected in the density of deaths in the Infantry. Most soldiers in Viet-nam had a sort of low-level fear, every day, but the intensity probably wasn't very high. Is the same true for troops in Iraq? Who can say. It's also not what this is about, so I'll curtail the digression).

On average, we are taking fewer casualties than we did in the first years of Viet-nam, but that same lack of troops on the ground can make that a misleading stat, because losing ten of a hundred would be losing 100 of a 1,000, etc. It's easy to skew the percentage when each piece is a greater portion of the whole.

TK

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

I know this could spin off a whole other discussion, but the 2000 figure for Iraq now only counts soldiers who died in Iraq proper. Deaths from war-related injuries in other places such as Germany and the U.S. aren't added to the official tally; friends of mine who are both currently in the service or veterans know soldiers who died after being shipped out of Iraq and didn't make the tally. I don't have a clue how many this would add, though.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

P.S. Just for a point of reference, I don't know exactly how many troops we had in Vietnam at the end of 1965, but by that point, according to the sources I found (the Combat Area Casualty File) the official death toll was 1,864.

According to AP

[killslowly.livejournal.com]

SSG George Alexander died at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas (making the counts 2000).

I guess they are counting people who died here (in the U.S.) of wounds suffered in Iraq. Or maybe they just made an exception for this one.

I do not know if they count suicides in the U.S. from PTSD aquired during deployment, but I think that they should.

Re: According to AP

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I don't know where the cut-off is.

I got my stats from, The Wall-USA which is a breakdown (by year, rank, branch of service, hometown) of all the names listed on The Wall. They list deaths which post date the building of the monument, so I don't know how they made the call.

I keep hearing (as madwriter alleges that people who leave the the theatre don't get counted, and that the actual numbers are somewhere closer to 2,500 because of it. I don't buy it, because of SSG Alexander (whom I saw reported as SGT, but that's the breaks) and guys like, "Master Sgt. James C. Coons 35 385th Signal Company, 54th Signal Battalion Conroe, Texas Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq, Coons' body was found at an outpatient hotel at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on July 4, 2003. In December 2005, a military casualty board ruled that his suicide should be considered a casualty of war. " get counted.

I was at Walter Reed, in Mologne House, when he was found.

This one Spc. Corey A. Hubbell 20 Company B, 46th Engineer Battalion Urbana, Illinois Died on June 26, 2003, in Camden Yards, Kuwait, from a non-combat related cause they could have hauled all the way to Landstuhl. He got heatstroke at Al Qayyarah, was evaced to Mosul, I got to ride to Kuwait, because he was a priority, so they brought a C-130 in to take him south, and there were three extra seats.

We all knew he wasn't going to make it.

There's no good way to hide this sort of thing. The unit is gonna know where they were, the family is gonna know where they were, and if they get told he died in Germany, so it wasn't related to Iraq, and they have his e-mail from the day before saying he's still there, etc., whose not gonnna raise a stink?

TK

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

I always feel a little queasy when they talk about the numbers.

We've been passing these "milestones" (it seems obscene to use the same word that you use to describe stuff like "baby's first step" to describe this), and I keep hoping everyone will be the last one.

Even though we signed up, and we knew it could happen... each death is still a tragedy to the people who knew them, who loved them. It doesn't matter how few people aren't coming home ever again if one of them is your husband, or your lover, or your daughter.

DV

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

"No man is an Island, the death of one diminishes us all" to compress and paraphrase Donne.

On the one hand, none of them matter. That's the soldier in me. We go places, we kill people, we die. That, in a nutshell is what being a soldier is.

But, to go back to Donne, I am a part of the continent the clods are washed away from. Their deaths diminish me.

If I thought the mission was really worth doing, I'd not care quite so much. But I think this is a doomed effort, and every day we spend, every dollar we use, every soldier, Marine, seaman and airman who gets killed, injured, sick or broken, is a tragedy, because it didn't need to happen; as it serves no good end.

Boy, when I start hitting the bottles tonight am I gonna get maudlin and pissy. :)

TK

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Lift one for me, would you?

DV