Hump Day SOS How Many Have Sacrificed?

How Many Sacrificed Lives for Freedom?

David Rhodes

As we celebrated Memorial Day this past Monday I started wondering how many Americans have sacrificed their lives for the cause of freedom in wars and conflicts over the years. It is difficult to find two sources with the exact same numbers but they are all relatively close.

 American Revolution - 4,435

 War of 1812- 2,260

 Mexican War - 13,284

 Civil War - 618,000

 Spanish American War - 2,446

 World War I- 116,516

 World War II- 405,399

 Korean War - 36,574

 Vietnam War- 58,220

 Gulf War- 383

 Iraq/Afghanistan- 6,607

Source: Department of Veteran Affairs as of Jan 1, 2015

This is not inclusive of 64 other conflicts from the Barbary Pirates to the Bay of Pigs to bombing in Beirut that resulted in 1000’s of more deaths. So with the 1,264,123 in declared wars and another 6,300 in other conflicts and operations the total is somewhere around 1,270,427. We all know that documentation wasn’t very good in the early days of this country so that is a close best guess based on the available information.

I thank them all for the sacrifice and I thank their families for going on and moving forward to continue the great work of building a great nation built upon these sacrifices!