05/26/2026
FROM THE AMERICAN MILITARY NEWSPAPER, THE STARS & STRIPESMemorial Day salutes those killed from Lexington Green to Operation Epic Fury By GARY WARNER STARS AND STRIPES • May 25, 2026
Memorial Day honors the more than 1 million Americans who have died in military service to the United States in the more than 250 years since Americans fought to win their independence from Great Britain.
The official number of American service members who have died in U.S. wars and conflicts is kept by the Defense Casualty Analysis System. Unofficial counts vary.
An estimated 1,011,027 troops have been killed between the “shot heard ‘round the world” fired in Lexington, Mass., in 1775 and the seven American “hostile action” deaths among the 13 Americans killed in Operation Epic Fury, the attack on Iran that began February 28.
An estimated 82,000 service members remain unaccounted for from conflicts dating back to World War II, according to the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. About 41,000 are presumed lost at sea.
The total count comes with an asterisk.
Researchers and historians estimate the Civil War killed more than 600,000 Americans on the Union and the Confederate sides. But the Pentagon counts only Union killed of 364,511. Confederates killed in the war are considered participants in a domestic rebellion.
About 290,000 Americans were killed while serving with Confederate forces, although records are incomplete.
“The Civil War (1861-1865) produced the most American casualties, when both Union statistics and Confederate estimates are taken into account,” according to the 2020 Congressional Research Service report on Pentagon casualty statistics.
The first American soldiers counted as American casualties are eight militia “minutemen” who died fighting British regulars at Lexington Green on April 19, 1775 — the start of the American Revolution. An estimated 4,435 died fighting for independence in the Revolutionary War. The total does not include the significant number of Americans who fought and died for the loyalist side along with the British.
Officially, the largest number of Americans killed in war was 405,399, who died in World War II.
Large-scale warfare and casualties marked the Korean War and Vietnam War, each with over 50,000.
About 7,000 died in the combined “war on terror” operations that followed the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001.
Memorial Day, as we now know it, originated in the wake of the Civil War.
By 1866, the year after the war ended, villages and towns would put flowers on the graves of the fallen in the spring. The practice was officially endorsed by the Grand Army of the Republic, the organization of Union veterans, who chose May 30 as “Decoration Day.”
After World War I, what was increasingly called “Memorial Day” had expanded to include Americans killed in all wars. In 1971, legislation designated the last Monday of May as the federal Memorial Day holiday.
Read more at: https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2026-05-25/memorial-day-military-sacrifice-remembrance-21776125.html
Source - Stars and Stripes
Read more at: https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2026-05-25/memorial-day-military-sacrifice-remembrance-21776125.html
Source - Stars and Stripes
Memorial Day honors Americans who died serving the U.S. over 250 years, from the Revolutionary War to modern conflicts.
