V-E Day
We wrote a post yesterday about V-E Day, but our buddy, Denise Williams at the Plainfield Patch writes a much better article;
Here in the US, from a total population of just over 132 million, 16.1 million served in WWll. Think about that number for a moment and realize that in a population of 132 million, approximately one quarter will be adult males. That means that nearly one half of all adult men here in the US served in WWll.
The US casualty count of 416,800 means more than one fourth of those who went off to war never came home. This war was truly global in scale, yet intimate as it involved nearly every family in this country.
You should go read the whole thing.
Category: Historical
Hate to nitpick, Jonn – but the young lady’s math is way off. 416,800 / 16,100,000 is nowhere near 25%. That works out to be a bit under 2.6%.
25% would be around 4 million, not 417k.
Hondo–while true, that’s war dead. Doesn’t include the injured, which IIRC, came in at about 700K. So now we’re up to about 1.1 million total casualties.
Considering that even in an “all-out” war no more than maybe 1 in 5 or 6 people are actual trigger-pullers, that’s still a pretty high rate.
NHSparky: she’s stating that “more than 1/4 of those who went to war” did not come home. That’s absolutely wrong, and also causes some readers to discount or ignore the rest of the article.
Tried to find an e-mail address to contact her, but couldn’t. If anyone else has this lady’s contact info, please let her know about the error.
Also true. All I was trying to clarify was that even if “only” 2.6 percent were combat deaths, the total casualty rate in front-line combat units was probably closer to 35-40 percent, if not higher… Not a happy ratio.
Gee, how did I know that Hondo would pick apart the math?
Fly shit, pepper, you know the story, Jonn. Had he ever been in the Navy, he’d have been a hell of a nuke…
ODC?(smile). I couldn’t resist the opening
She lost me with the math. I don’t have a calculator in front of me, but I think 416,800 is somewhat less than 25% of 16,100,000.
NHSparky: wanna guess what I studied in college? (smile)
NHSparky: I think Rick Atkinson may have discussed infantry casualty rates in one of the first two volumes of his excellent “Liberation Trilogy” series about the US Army in World War II. I can’t remember if it was in “An Army at Dawn” (North Africa) or “The Day of Battle” (Sicily/Italy). I have both; I’ll see if I can find that discussion tonight and post something if I can.
The series is excellent (he received the Pulitzer for the first volume, and both are excellent). The third volume (“Guns at Last Light”, Normandy to end of war) is apparently due out next week – 14 May.
The first 2 are definitely worth reading. I’m certain the third will be as well.
Joe Williams: if you meant OCD, nah – I just have a decent feel for numbers and tend to notice when stuff like that that seems to be “off”. I then get out a calculator and confirm.
Robert A. Heinlein had a quote about folks who were deficient in math skills (I’ll spare everyone; it wasn’t complimentary). I think he was a bit extreme, but he had at least a bit of a point. If you’re not willing to “do the math”, there’s a helluva lot of stuff in this world you’ll never understand – and you’ll swallow a lot of BS.
The math actually works-the author is saying that of the whole 132 million population, 1/4 (25%) of that amount are adult males, or around 33 million (figure not stated above).
So, if the original figure of 16.1 million served in WWII is in fact accurate, that is about half of that 33 million number, so the conclusion she was trying to reach in the blurb above works (math wise).
I don’t know the accuracy of the numbers and it doesn’t speak to women service members of course and other factors, but the math itself is reasonable.
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Dang-belay my last! (The math works post….I need coffee!)
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Homer no fucntion beer well without…