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To: abishai

Antietam was the bloodiest single day battle in American history .Over 23,000 casualities on both sides.More Americans died on September 17, 1862, than on any other day in the nation’s military.


18 posted on 04/04/2012 1:34:38 AM PDT by U-238
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To: U-238

My Great X 3 grandfather fought at Bloody Lane with the 4th North Carolina under DH Hill there. Almost had a near disaster when the sunken lane got flanked and the Confederates were mercilessly cut down in droves.


22 posted on 04/04/2012 1:42:59 AM PDT by abishai
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To: U-238

You are aware that casualties are different from deaths?

Total dead at Antietam was about 3500. I have no idea if this is the most in a single day for American troops, but it’s not a whole lot more than died on 9/11. Pearl Harbor was 2500.

Most troops dead during the war died from disease, 2x to 3x those who died as a result of combat. Most troops were farmboys. Bring them all together in unsanitary conditions and they all swapped diseases and a whole bunch died. Many regiments lost over 50% before they saw combat.

Which means we consistently under-estimate the violence of recent US wars. To a very considerable extent the lower death rate recently measures not the intensity of combat but better medical care.

Same is true of the murder rate. Recent declines are at least as much due to better emergency care as to less violence.


30 posted on 04/04/2012 2:24:40 AM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: U-238

To understand pacificism in Western Europe, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 Britain had nearly 60,000 casualties (of whom 20,000 were killed). In one day.

The troops didn’t know it at the time, but the French were about to lose Verdun (which may have taken them out of the war if breached); they relayed this to the British, who sent their troops over the top to draw German troops away from Verdun. By the end of the day, the British weren’t even running towards the German trenches any more; they simply walked towards them and were mowed down by machine guns.

25 years later they were asked to do it again, and much of Europe said “no thanks”; they realized all those men lost in the “war to end all wars” had died for nothing. It has given them a healthy skepticism that holds their governments much more accountable to their populations than we have here.


44 posted on 04/04/2012 4:09:03 AM PDT by kearnyirish2
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