Central Valley Corvettes - July 2017

For Life, Liberty and Happiness
By Aimee Parkin
Independence. Freedom. Life. Liberty. Happiness. Take a moment and think, “What do
those ideals mean to me? What would I do to preserve them?”
On July 4, 1776, after years living under colonial rule, and amidst a bloody war, a group
of men, representatives from thirteen colonies, came together under the most desperate of
circumstances to draft a declaration. This was not a declaration of love, nor was it a declaration
of war, though their rulers believed it to be just that. On that hot summer day, they declared
their independence from “despotism, death, desolation, and tyranny; ravag[ing], plunder[ing],
… and destroy[ing] the lives of our people.”
They declared with faith, loyalty, and confidence – “We hold these truths to be selfevident,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The men who bravely signed their names to this declaration did so knowing that their
lives, and those of their families, were in peril. The British would certainly hunt them down and
seal their fate with their blood. No mercy shown, their murders executed in the cruelest of
manners.
So why did they do it? Why were these values – equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of
happiness – so precious to them that they would die for them? The Founding Fathers provide
us a clear answer in the same document.
…[W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design
to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,
and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Since the Revolutionary War, the United States has been involved in 10 formally
declared wars and numerous other conflicts in which Congress did not formally declare an act
of war. Below is a table of each war’s enlistments, non-fatal wounds, and deaths.
War Enlisted Soldiers Non-Fatal Wounds Deaths
Revolutionary War Unknown 6,188 4,435
War of 1812 286,730 4,505 2,260
Mexican American War 78,718 4,152 13,282
Civil War 2,213,363 281,881 364,511
Spanish-American War 306,760 1,662 2,446
World War I 4,734,991 204,002 116,516
World War II 16,112,566 670,846 405,339
Korean War 5,720,000 103,284 36,574
Vietnam War 8,744,000 150,341 58,220
Persian Gulf War 2,225,000 467 383
Operation Enduring Freedom 1,924,810 20,092 2,350
Operation Iraqi Freedom 31,956 4,424
Operation New Dawn 295 73
Operation Inherent Resolve 44 43
Operation Freedom’s Sentinel 192 40
TOTAL 42,346,908 1,479,907 1,010,916
NOTE: The enlisted total for Operation Enduring Freedom includes all US operations since Operation Enduring Freedom
began. The wounded and dead totals are separated to respect the lives of each individual and family affected.