AEF CASUALTY REPORT, 95% COMPLETE, IS PUBLISHED
Cedar Rapids, Iowa (JFK+50) On February 1, 1919, The Evening Gazette of Cedar Rapids published in a front page article the official tabulation of casualties for the American Expeditionary Forces of World War I. The headline read: "RAINBOW* LOSSES 2930 MEN." This tabulation was reported at the time as 95% complete.
According to the Gazette, the War Department reported...
27,762 killed in action
11,895 died of wounds
14,549 missing in action
2,785 prisoners of war
Carol R. Byerly, in the International Encyclopedia of the First World War, gives the final official Department of Defense statistics as...
53,402 killed in action
63, 114 died of disease^
^many deaths were a result of the influenza epidemic of 1918
4.7 million American men and women served in WWI with 2.8 million of those serving overseas. As of November 11, 1918, there were 2,057,675 American military personnel in France with about half that number being "combat effective." There were 180,000 African-Americans serving the United States military in France.
Of the 4.7 million servicemen and women, 4.1 million were in the U.S. Army, 600,000 in the U.S. Navy and 79,000 in the U.S.M.C.
*General Douglas MacArthur came up with the idea to take men from National Guards across the nation to speed up the process of getting the AEF to France. The General said this division would "stretch across the United States like a rainbow." Thus, it became known as the Rainbow Division.
SOURCES
"'Rainbow Division' that represented the United States formed in New York in August 1917," by Eric Durr, July 24, 2017, www.army.mil/
"Rainbow Losses 2,930 Men," The Evening Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Saturday, February 1, 1919, www.newspaperarchive.com/
"War Losses (USA)," by Carol R. Byerly, October 8, 2014, International Encyclopedia of the First World War, www.encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/
U.S. Troops Pass Buckingham Palace
London, U.K.
Photo by Horace Nicholls
Imperial War Museum Image
