2000 children:

From an AP story, Military faces growing ranks of bereaved:

Of the 3,350 Americans who died in Iraq and Afghanistan through early January, 1,586 of them - 47.3 percent — were married. Those fallen warriors left behind 1,954 children, according to the Pentagon's Manpower Data Center. More recent deaths have pushed that figure past 2,000.

Compared to the heavily draftee combat troops of the Vietnam war, today's volunteer fighting force is older, more reliant on National Guard and Reserve citizen-soldiers, and more likely to be married.

posted by Quiddity at 3/03/2007 11:54:00 PM