Something which makes one realize just how many families were destroyed is that U.S. Casualties are relatively light for all of our wars since WWI. Yet in my parent’s high school class of maybe 16, one was killed in WWII.
My high school class of around 160 still had one killed in Viet Nam plus I had a first cousin killed. There were four of us who hung out together in High School. One of the 4 was wounded in Viet Nam.
Among my father’s photos, many taken just after the war is one of Berlin High School. It is just a pile of rubble.
Before it became a casualty of World War II, the chapel of the French officers’ academy at St. Cyr had memorial plaques for each year’s graduating class that had subsequently died in service.
The plaque for 1914 simply read “The Class of 1914”.