Model Forum / General / Models / January 2006

Not inconceivable.  Remember that the US Civil war killed off some-
where around 500-650,000 AMERICANS.  The figure always in-
cludes the southern forces since they were still AMERICANS after
the war.

This tends to make the figure seem to inflate at times.  We also
lost somewhere around 150K troops during WWI.  The trench war-
fare was nasty on troop losses, and I usually see the troops lost
to the Influenza outbreak at the end of the war included in this fig-
ure as well.

Because it's a person's opinion that matters when adding deaths
into this number, and it's very hard to verify some of the data (Ie:
did the soldier from the Revolutionary War die or simply disappear
during the battle?) I don't like to use numbers like this.

If you want to say APROXIMATELY 1M troops have died by that
date, Okay, I'll go along with that.  But to say that EXACTLY 1M
troops had died by that date, I'll have to argue.  Just the historian
in my talking.  :)  I'm sure that they're taking their data from a re-
liable source.  My first guess would be something like the VFW,
American Legion, or the VA (Most likely it's a government source
of one type or another).

Hope this helps!

-andy