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MortDebarquement

Temporary grave of an American machine-gunner during the Battle of Normandy.

A casualty is a person who is the victim of an accident, injury, or trauma. The word casualties is most often used by the news media to describe deaths and injuries resulting from wars or disasters. Casualties is sometimes misunderstood to mean fatalities, but non-fatal injuries are also casualties.

In military usage, casualties usually refer to combatants who have been rendered combat-ineffective, or all persons lost to active military service, which comprises those killed in action, killed by disease, disabled by physical injuries, disabled by psychological trauma, captured, deserted, and missing, but does not include injuries which do not prevent a person from fighting.

Civilian casualties are civilian or non-combatant persons killed or injured by military action. The sum of casualties, whether military personnel or civilians, is known as the casualty count. Civilian prisoners of war are also casualties of war, but are counted separately from those injured or killed.

NATO's definitions[]

Casualty[]

In relation to personnel, any person who is lost to his organization by reason of having been declared dead, wounded, diseased, detained, captured or missing.[1]

Battle casualty[]

Any casualty incurred as the direct result of hostile action, sustained in combat or relating thereto or sustained going to or returning from a combat mission. [2]

Non-battle casualty[]

A person who is not a battle casualty, but who is lost to his organization by reason of disease or injury, including persons dying from disease or injury, or by reason of being missing where the absence does not appear to be voluntary or due to enemy action or to being interned.[3]

Impact[]

According to The world health report 2004 by the WHO, deaths from intentional injuries (including war, violence, but also suicide), was estimated to be responsible for 2.8% of all deaths, causing 26 deaths per 100,000 per year overall (37 in males and 15 in females).[4] In the same report, unintentional injuries was estimated to be responsible for 6.2% of all deaths, causing 57 deaths per 100,000 per year overall (74 in males and 40 in females).[4]

References[]

  • Casualty – Definition from the Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary [1].

See also[]

  • List of causes of death by rate

Further reading[]

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
  • America's Wars: U.S. Casualties and Veterans [2]. Infoplease.
  • Online text [3]: War Casualties (1931), by Albert G. Love, Lt. Colonel, Medical Corps, U.S.A.. Medical Field Service School, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. The Army Medical Bulletin Number 24.
  • Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century [4].
  • Statistical Summary: America's Major Wars [5]. U.S. Civil War Center.
  • The world's worst massacres [6]. By Greg Brecht. Fall, 1987. Whole Earth Review.
  • Twentieth Century Atlas – Death Tolls [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15].
  • Gifford, Brian. “Combat Casualties and Race: What Can We Learn from the 2003–2004 Iraq Conflict?” [16]. Armed Forces & Society, Jan 2005; vol. 31: pp. 201–225.
  • Kummel, Gerhard and Nina Leonhard“Casualties and Civil-Military Relations: The German Polity between Learning and Indifference.” [17].Armed Forces & Society, Jul 2005; vol. 31: pp. 513–535.
  • Smith, Hugh. “What Costs Will Democracies Bear? A Review of Popular Theories of Casualty Aversion.” [18]. Armed Forces & Society, Jul 2005; vol. 31: pp. 487–512
  • Van Der Meulen, Jan and Joseph Soeters.“Considering Casualties: Risk and Loss during Peacekeeping and Warmaking.” [19]. Armed Forces & Society, Jul 2005; vol. 31: pp. 483–486.
  • Bennett, Stephen Earl and Richard S. Flickinger. “Americans’ Knowledge of U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq, April 2004 to April 2008.” [20]. Armed Forces & Society, Apr 2009; vol. 35: pp. 587–604.
  • Varoglu, A. Kadir and Adnan Bicaksiz“Volunteering for Risk: The Culture of the Turkish Armed Forces.” [21]. Armed Forces & Society, Jul 2005; vol. 31: pp. 583–598
  • Ben-Ari, Eyal. “Epilogue: A ‘Good’ Military Death.” [22]. Armed Forces & Society, Jul 2005; vol. 31: pp. 651–664


This page uses content from the English language Wikipedia. The original content was at Casualty (person). The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with this Familypedia wiki, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons License.
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