Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironduke
I was doing a bit of reading on the planned invasion of Japan in 1945-46. The US had 500,000 Purple Hearts manufactured in anticipation of heavy casualties. So many that the Purple Hearts issued in every US military operation afterwards is from this 1945 stock, and there's still 120,000 left, so many that they're kept on hand for immediate award in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Good gawd. That's a factoid I'd never heard before. And when one considers what it actually MEANS, in human terms...sobering.
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"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell
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