Three Years' Toll

War Secretary Stimson's periodic announcement of war casualties made grim reading last week. Total U.S. casualties in three years of war now total 663,859, more than two and a half times the U.S. casualties of World War I.

Heaviest Army casualties were during the concentrated and furious period of the Normandy invasion. D-day also marked the beginning of a sharp ascent (see chart) which continued to mount as the fighting raged closer to Germany's borders. U.S. Army casualties in Europe from D-day to Jan. 1, said Stimson, have been 54,562 dead, 232,672 wounded, 45,678 missing. The Secretary could have added, had he been so minded, that while the casualties on Normandy beaches were lower than the most optimistic had guessed, the total as of Jan. 1, 1945 was substantially higher than even the pessimistic had expected.

Included in Mr. Stimson's figures were the casualties in the Ardennes sector during the first three weeks of the German breakthrough: 40,000.* This figure still did not entirely reflect the change wrought by the German breakthrough; e.g., the 106th Division, with more than 8,000 casualties, was smashed, had to be rebuilt before it could go into action again.

One other fact emerged: as U.S. forces increasingly assumed the burden of the fighting on the Western Front and committed themselves more extensively in the Pacific campaign, their losses drew closer to those of the British Commonwealth, which now total more than 1,000,000 in five and a quarter years of conflict (including more than 600,000 from the United Kingdom). Empire casualties in World War I were 3,190,235.

* German casualties in the same fighting, by Allied estimates, were 90,000.

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