The saddest thing on the news today

[venta]

The Royal Family are in Alrewas today, dedicating a memorial to the 16,000 people who have died in service, training or acts of terrorism since the end of WWII.

In the news report it says:

"There is room for 15,000 more names to be carved on the Portland stone walls of the memorial."

Comments

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

Actually for me - it was thinking - I wonder if Broster name will be there? He was Serving when a collegue gave him a lift on the back of his bike - and went rounf a corner fast on the wrong side.

It was so strange seeing the men in uniforms marching by his coffin. But I don't think he'll be there.

And then it was thinking - it's taken 50 years to fill the first half. I don't see it taking 50 years to fill the next half the way things are going.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I don't want to imply that any of these deaths is insignificant, but 170 British troops have been killed in 4 1/2 years in Iraq, and 82 in 6 years in Afghanistan (that second figure includes MoD civilians). I don't know how many have been killed elsewhere (in training, for example).

Still, the way things are *currently* going, the British armed forces are not setting a pace to fill the other half in 50 years. May that continue.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

A British Legion branch page totals 2755 fatalities on active service in conflict zones since 1945, the largest contributors being Korea and Northern Ireland. Since there are 16,000 names on the monument, I guess deaths through enemy action are a minority of those which occur while in service.

So I suppose that the main factor affecting the number of deaths in service is the number of people in service: the more soldiers there are, the more will suffer accidental death.

[(Anonymous)]

I recall being PROFOUNDLY moved by the Canadian War Memorial at Vimy Ridge; I guess what these monuments do is bring home the cost of war in a way that statistics and news reports never can. The sight of all those names, thousands of them covering every available surface, is deeply affecting - as is the reminder that there's a family behind every one.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I was packed off on a school trip to Ypres with similar effect. The effect of the statistics (for me, anyway) is in the contrast. For British troops, wars since 1945 simply haven't been like the World Wars, in terms of thousands dying. Other nations have had it different, of course - the US in Vietnam, and civilians in any war. But the British armed forces are few in number and highly professional, with the result that they simply can't and won't suffer heavy fatalities.

So, the cost of our wars *isn't* measured in British casualties (which is not to say they're insignificant). The death toll is generally among civilians, because very little has happened over 60 years to make a war zone a less dangerous place to live.