How many soldiers die in war per week?

Answer 1

There was no steady pace to the deaths in the Civil War. Altogether about 620,000 men died according to the best estimates, and they are only estimates, as precise figures were not always kept, and when they were, they have not always survived. There were about 360,000 dead Yankees and 260,000 dead Rebels. But disease killed 2/3rds of them. There was a flurry of this dying from disease as new regiments arrived in camp full of boys fresh off the farm, who had never been anywhere, literally, including school for any lengthy time, and who thus had never had the common childhood diseases, which they got by the hundreds as soon as they got to an army camp. This was putting a new regiment "through the fevers", and a new unit might lose half its men to death or medical discharge before ever getting anywhere near the enemy. And disease continued to take a toll throughout the war. Germs were unknown, and sanitation was not accorded much importance. So the drinking water was often fouled and there were epidemics of typhoid and typhus as a result, and dysentery. Men understood how to vaccinate for small pox, by dicing up a scab from a sore on a small pox patient, making a cut in the arm, and poking in a little piece of scab, which, if the person vaccinated was lucky, would only produce a mild case which would provide immunity afterward. But no other vaccines were known, and viruses were unheard of. Surgeons washed neither their hands nor their instruments between patients.

So roughly 87,000 Rebels actually died from enemy action, and about 120,000 Yankees. Most of these came in the warm months, campaigning season. During January, February and March the armies went into winter quarters, built themselves rough camps, and waited for warm weather and for the dirt roads - and that's all there were, dirt roads - to dry out enough that wagons and cannon would not get stuck in the mud. As campaigning for the year got underway there was constant friction, "skirmishing" between the armies. Little small fights in which a few men might die. Then there would come a big battle, and in two or three days thousands would be killed, and more would die from the medical care they received for their wounds in the weeks following. Some years there were more big battles than in other years. For about the last year of the war, in the east, during the siege of Richmond and Petersburg, there was fighting for the entire year. But even then most days it was just skirmishing and sharpshooting between the lines, killing maybe a few dozen each day, and then there would be a large clash as the Yankees sought to extend their lines some more, to stretch the thin ranks of the Rebels further, and get across the few roads and railroads on which Richmond and Petersburg depended for food and supplies.

So if you average it out over four years around 400 Rebels and 600 Yankees died per week from combat. But this gives a misleading picture, as in some weeks, particularly in winter, few died at the hands of the enemy, while some weeks in the summer saw thousands killed.

Many POWs died, from starvation, which reduced resistance to disease, which was rife in the totally unsanitary POW camps. There was inadequate clothing and shelter in the camps, which took its toll in the camps of the north for captured Rebels. The north deliberately located its camps in unhealthy, rugged, inhospitable places - a peninsula sticking out into Lake Erie at Sandusky, Ohio; an island almost entirely below water level in the Delaware River; the tip of a peninsula projecting into the Chesapeake Bay, at Point Lookout.

Answer 2

Too many