Counting US Non-combat Deaths
Our website includes over 1,150 listings of military personnel killed from causes other than by enemy induced deaths in battle. We have attempted to place each of these deaths into one of the following categories:
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· Accident, including vehicle, helicopter, electrocution, etc.
· Friendly Fire
· Homicide
· Natural causes, including illness, heat stroke, etc.
· Self-inflicted, including suicide and presumed suicide
· Under investigation
· Generic “non-combat cause”
· Non-hostile gunshot wound; non-combat weapons discharge
· Overdose
We did not invent the term, “non-combat death.” It is the official designation for deaths of active duty military not due to combat. We try to categorize these deaths in order to compile some (imperfect) statistics on how these non-combat deaths are occurring.
There are many problems involved in creating and keeping such a list accurately. The majority of the listings come from the official Department of Defense death announcements which come out shortly after the deaths occur. We rely, initially, on the cause of death listed in these announcements as “non-combat related” or some similar designation.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of these official announcements leave the cause as the generic “non-combat cause” and most are also stated to be “Under investigation.” The DoD does not officially update their announcements once these investigations are completed, so it is a large task to go back to each listing looking for updates in the press in order to place them into a proper category. We’ve spent a lot of time doing this, slowly updating causes of death and trying to make sure the sources are accurate. In the past year or so, every single Marine death is announced as “died during combat operations”, which obviously skirts the cause of death.
We are quite aware that these listings are not all inclusive. We often come across media reports of the deaths of active duty military personnel on domestic military bases or off-base which are carried only in the local media outlets. These are added to the listings as we come across them. Occasionally, there are wonderful people who email me listings to add or corrections of the existing lists.
Here is a link to Department of Defense statistics on casualties.
Question and answer(?) re non-combat death statistics.
If you have an entry that you feel should be included or updated in these listings, please send the entry along with a link or other authoritative documentation to the editor.
Listings:
