05-25-2005, 01:36 PM
"Through out history troops that loose all hope to survival simply die".
That sentence caught my attention, because there is another disparity I have noticed long ago, when we read literary sources, casualties are given in many thousands, normally there are no details of wounded or missing in action, however in battles in which we have detailed accounts of casualties we see that in fact there are much more wounded and missing soldiers than killed, for example.Lee at Antietam had 13.724 casualties, but from this number only 2.700 were killed, 9.024 wounded and 2.000 missing, in Napoleonic and XVIII century battle the numbers are consistent, there is a ratio 5 to 10 wounded to 1 killed, and in a routed army missing in action and prisoners many times are most of the casualties. And of course, the 2 main source of casualties for any army in campaign were disease and desertions. I don´t believe in those numbers of hundreds or ten of thousands killed in battle.
That sentence caught my attention, because there is another disparity I have noticed long ago, when we read literary sources, casualties are given in many thousands, normally there are no details of wounded or missing in action, however in battles in which we have detailed accounts of casualties we see that in fact there are much more wounded and missing soldiers than killed, for example.Lee at Antietam had 13.724 casualties, but from this number only 2.700 were killed, 9.024 wounded and 2.000 missing, in Napoleonic and XVIII century battle the numbers are consistent, there is a ratio 5 to 10 wounded to 1 killed, and in a routed army missing in action and prisoners many times are most of the casualties. And of course, the 2 main source of casualties for any army in campaign were disease and desertions. I don´t believe in those numbers of hundreds or ten of thousands killed in battle.
AKA Inaki
