re: #337 lostlakehiker

When it comes to WW2, you are correct. Only the German army on the Eastern Front took as much as half its casualties from small arms fire.

But in the civil war, it was very different. At Gettysburg, only some 10 percent, if that, of the casualties were from artillery, and Gettysburg was one of the most artillery-intensive battles of the war. Many were fought in terrain that gave no fields of fire to the artillery of the day. Indirect fire was hardly a factor: with no radios or telephones to connect spotters to gunmen, the technology just wasn’t there.

In wars past, didn’t the a lot of soldiers die of illness or exposure? We don’t see that anymore.