1. How did technological advances, tactical shortcomings, and inadequate medical support combine to produce astonishing casualties?
The technological advances of weapons made it so that a battle where soldiers were shoulder to shoulder they would fall like dominos from the powerful well aimed guns that had a range of about 300 feet. The tactical shortcomings really caused a lot of deaths as generals did not anticipate such brutal showdowns and the loss of thousands of soldiers in their armies took a huge toll on the power they had. The inadequate medical support caused a horrendous amount of casualties as there were no medics on the field, ways to move wounded soldiers for medical care, use of antiseptics to clean wounds to avoid massive infection, and disease control took out many thousands of soldiers.
2. What caused more Union soldiers to be killed overall than rebel soldiers?
The inadequate disease prevention for things like typhoid and dysentery killed many Union soldiers. The surgeons were like butchers and amputated limbs of soldiers in sometimes piles of severed limbs and then did not take antiseptic steps to clean the instruments used for the surgery, their hands or surgical clothes, and many of those that had limbs amputated died as a result. Your chances of survival were about 50/50 after having a limb amputated. The lack of transportation for wounded soldiers left many laying in battlefields to die for days starving and lacking water and wound care.
3. How could such great loss of life been prevented in the Civil War?
The great loss of life could have been prevented by not having soldiers shoulder to shoulder on the battlefield with the advanced weapons having the range they did. This field battle tactic was virtually suicide for the soldiers as they approached the enemy. Having disease control such as immunizations, clean surgical tools and procedures with germ control, and adequate medical facilities could have prevents thousands of deaths.
4. The article says that a century later in Vietnam only one in four-hundred wounded died as to the one in five wounded that passed in the Civil War, what factors changed over the years to alter that statistic so drastically?
The factors that changed between the two wars included immunizations against diseases being dispensed and medical care being greatly improved so that prevention of disease was huge. The adequate medical training and staffing of the Vietnam War gave wounded and dying soldiers a huge advantage for survival. The addition of germ control was huge in preventing deaths. The ability to have air and ground transport with vehicles, planes, and helicopters for wounded soldiers saved many lives in the Vietnam War.
No comments:
Post a Comment