November 22, 2006
Deaths in Vietnam Posted by Fredric Smoler at 10:00 AM EST Joshua Zeitz writes that “roughly 40 percent of all Vietnam War draftees were killed in combat; in the Army, this figure reached as high as 62 percent in 1969.” I don’t see how this can be true, so I am assuming Josh mistyped and meant something else. It can’t be true because according to the statistics I can quickly find on the Internet, 8,744,000 GIs were on active duty during the war era (dating our participation as occurring between August 5, 1964, and May 7, 1975). There were 1,728,344 draftees between 1965 and 1973. 38 percent of the draftees actually served in Vietnam, and draftees accounted for 30.4 percent (17,725) of combat deaths in Vietnam, all combat deaths totaling 47,359 (there were also 10,797 non-combat deaths, and 2,338 missing in action). These statistics may be off by a little, but from what I remember of the scale of the relevant numbers, they are not off by much.
Now, if 40 percent of all draftees were killed in action, that would mean around 692,000 draftee deaths, which clearly didn’t happen. If I am doing my sums correctly, the draftees who served in Vietnam numbered something like 656,771, and if what Josh means is that 40 percent of those men were killed in action, that still means something like 260,000 draftees killed in action. So something is wrong here. If Josh meant to write that draftees were 40 percent of those who served, that is close to the figure of 38 percent. It is true that the draftees suffered a disproportionate number of combat deaths, since they were only 25 percent of those who served in Vietnam.
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