Two French regiments accidentally attacking each other during the Battle of Fleurus led to the habit of attaching a white scarf to the flags of the regiments from 1690 - white being the colour of the kings of France.[citation needed]

[edit] Friendly fire in the U.S. military

Pentagon estimates[citation needed] of U.S. friendly fire deaths, as a percentage of total U.S. deaths:

• American Civil War
  • Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson died as a result of friendly fire, most likely due to an error of identification.
• World War II: 21,000 (16%)[citation needed] Figures have run anywhere from 2% to 12% depending upon the source.
  • Highest-ranking U.S. loss of the war, Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair
  • Sinking of the submarine FS Surcouf. This was initially attributed to a collision with the U.S. freighter Thompson Lykes, but a later report stated that the Surcouf was mistaken for a U-boat and destroyed by U.S. planes. Historians differ on which account is true.
  • Sinking of the submarine USS Dorado by U.S. planes.
  • Likely sinking of the submarine USS Seawolf by U.S. forces.
  • Damage to the light cruiser USS Atlanta by the cruiser USS San Francisco.
  • Near damage of the battleship USS Iowa (with President Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard) by the destroyer USS William D. Porter. This incident led to the “Willie D.” being greeted thereafter with the hail, “Don’t shoot, we’re Republicans!”
  • An airplane carrying famed Big Band musician and US Army Air Force bandmaster Major Glenn Miller disappeared over the English Channel on December 15, 1944 enroute from England to France. Most evidence indicates that the aircraft strayed into a zone designated for the safe dropping of unexpended bombs by allied aircraft, and was knocked out of the sky by the blasts of British Royal Air Force bombers returning from an aborted mission over Germany.
  • The death in Belgium on Christmas Day 1944 of Major George E. Preddy, commander of the 328th Fighter Squadron and the highest-scoring US ace still in combat in the European Theater at the time. Preddy chased a German fighter over an American anti-aircraft battery and was hit by their fire aimed at his intended target.
• Vietnam War: 8,000 (14%)
• Operation Desert Storm (1991): 35 (23%)
• Invasion of Afghanistan (2002 –): 6 Canadian (7 % of Canadian fatalities); 2 American
  • In the Tarnak Farm incident, (2002) 4 fatalities were Canadian soldiers.[4]
  • Pat Tillman, (2004) famous American football player killed

I googled Vietnm Fragging and then got something official and followed friendly fire and there it said 14%.. You can do likewise.

I've been checking friendly fire stats for Viet Nam since before you became a Communist. Depending on what sources you read; DOD, GAO, West Point Military History Series etc.; the percentages run between 11/2 to 12%. You also have to decide if you are going to count the number of deaths that were not combat related before you start throwing out numbers. Non-combat deaths by themselves ranged as high as 10,000 for the 1961-1975 time frame.

There are no "definitive" numbers for friendly fire since there are too many variables. This is something you would have known if you had engaged your brain before putting your mouth in motion

Just cutting and pasting from Wikipedia does not make you a scholar or even well informed. Do some leg work for a change; and see if you can come close to a correct answer.

I am not a communist ; I am anti Fascist. I believe in our Constitution. Ask your Commander in Chief what he believes in.

I would never have guessed the numbers would be so high for friendly fire or fraggging. Man, we have good fire power. Just the wrong target. We were having the same problem in Afganistan; killing our own boys. Pat Tillman for one.

Your language and attitude is so male; take that for what you want.

Your language and logic are completely vapid. Take that and ram it up your brain.

Unebug, friendly fire incidents are common to all wars. Regarding Tillman, probably just a mistake in the chaos of battle. The Army's only guilt was in wanting to give a legitimate hero a noble hero's death. Ill advised perhaps, but certainly no sinister conspiracy here.

As was pointed out to you previously, it is hard to calculate the percentage of casualties resulting from friendly fire. And harder still to calculate incidents of intentional friendly fire. Or fragging, if you will.

Regarding fragging, the practice did occur. Primarily against Officers and NCOs, and mainly at the tail end of our involvement, but the enlisted personnel would occasionally resort to such drastic measures against each other if the grudge was serious enough.

However, it is impossible to calculate the percentage of casualties resulting from such incidents. Particularily in the case of intentional friendly fire. In such a case, the responsible parties weren't exactly going to come forward and claim responsibility for the incident. To do so could put one at risk of criminal wrongdoing, even today as few statutes of limitation apply to homicides.

That being said though, we weren't in the habit of wasting each other, or our Officers and NCOs. Such incidents were too numerous, but not anywhere as near commonplace as made out in the press at the time.

In fact the norm was to try to help your buddy out in a tough spot, even if you hated him. You would, after all, want him to do the same for you.

In any war accidents and incidents will happen. The battlefield is a very confused and chaotic place, and it's easy to make a mistake when adrenaline is pumping through one's system. Vietnam received mainly nothing but negative press, and any such incidents were generally blown completely out of porportion by the press at the time.

Whereas in World War Two, such incidents may have actually been even more commonplace than in Vietnam, but largely went unreported. Mainly to help keep morale up on the home front. The thought of GIs killing GIs is disturbing, particularly if the incident is intentional. And such incidents got an undue amount of coverage by the press in the Vietnam War, whereas in previous wars, such incidents were either downplayed, or ignored outright.

In any event, as indicated, such things will happen in any conflict. And I submit to you that it is impossible to arrive at even close approximations here. To say nothing of accurate figures. Especially in the case of deliberate incidents, which not too many individuals would want to step forward and take the credit for.

Shit sometimes happens in a combat zone, just as it does back in civilian life.

That does not mean that a serious problem exists here though. Anytime you put humans in such a stress-filled, hostile environment, accidents and incients are bound to happen.

However that does not make them as commonplace as some journalistic hack desperate for copy would depict them to be.

Shit happens.

No big deal.

One just goes on and does one's job.

Who is to say what I thought about our accidentally shooting our own men. One in a thousand would be bad. I know the movie that showed a night battle in a jungle was telling about shooting blind. The jungle was more Vietnam than Europe. I would have gone to the ground and then quietly crawled away still likely getting shot in the backside.

Rob you are the benevalent ruler. So polite , sensible and generous. It takes all kinds of people to make the world go round. Ha! ha!

About Pat Tillman; once people are known to be dishonest all kinds of things can be attributed to them or their forces. Did you know that Pat was beginning to speak out against the war among the troops? I wonder if this could have effected how the men thought of him. Was he a traitor? How would Washington have perceived this attitude? If you can lie about how he died after the fact for the sake of the war effort; is it stretching ones thinking that someone may have been careless to stop his traiterous attitude from ever getting back to the States. War! All is fair in love and war.

We just killed 9 Afghan troops last week-end. No wonder they do not want us to come to their country and fight. Obama does not sound like the Peace Candidate in my opinion when he talks of increasing the troops in Afghanistan. No one wants us and I can see why. Oh yes Iran next.

Unrbug, what's your source for the rumor Tillman was speaking out against the War?

<<<<Unrbug, what's your source for the rumor Tillman was speaking out against the War?>>>

Affirmative Dr. Bill. He was an "Obamacon" in that regard.

Officially what I hear is they take the line, that he joined up for Afghanistan, not Iraq.

Later, had questioned the Iraq campaign. Ditto on his brother who also was a soldier ( dunno if he still is).

So he did a tour in Afghanistan, did a tour in Iraq, and was doing a third tour in Afghanistan, where he was either accidentally or deliberately "fragged". Although I don't know if normal friendly fire can qualify as fragging, but hey maybe so.

I hear they are naming the freeway over the Hoover Dam after Tillman.

We spoke out against the war quite often in Vietnam. Nobody, Officers and NCOs alike, wanted to be involved in a conflict nobody had any intention of winning.

GIs always bitch about any war. They're the ones who have to go out and fight it, so the Army could expect a little bitching and tolerated it. They probably even encouraged it. It was called venting, and bitching was a way of blowing off some off the stress. Our commanders knew this, and made allowances as long as we did our jobs.

Very very doubtful that Tillman would have been killed for bitching about any war. GIs have bitched from Biblical times on. It's just part of the breed.

Again, unless you have absolute proof to the contrary, it must be assumed that Tillman was merely the victim of an unfortunate but unintentional friendly fire incident. Perhaps the Army should have been forthright about this, but their motives weren't sinister. No mother wants to her her son was killed by his own forces. It's bad enough to have a loved one killed in a combat zone, but harder when the incident is related to incidental fire.

Far more humane to merely say one's loved one died in battle in the nation's interest.It doesn't ease the pain of the loss, but it does perhaps give meaning to the sacrifice.

And this is all the Army is guilty of here. Wanting to give Tillman a noble warrior's death. Ill advised perhaps, but certainly nothing sinister involved here.

And this I know to be a fact. I knew of a couple of incidents where the partie were killed by other than enemy fire. Both incidents were questionable in regards to the accidental nature of the deaths, but in both incidents the people who died had also needlessly gotten their buddies killed in the past.

Essentially, accidental or not, they got what they deserved. Now you don't tell their parents they died because they were fuck-ups who got their own people killed. Or even if their deaths were accidental, that they died because they had their heads up their asses at the wrong time. Or someone else did.

It's simply more humane and compassionate to list them as KIAs.

As I said, shit happens. And it was not all that commonplace either. You mentioned the jungle terrain in Vietnam. In World War Two, outside invasions or major assaults, the tactics employed at the small unit were the same. Find the enemy and shoot him first, preferably from ambush, where he can't shoot back. In fact, it's better he doesn't even know you're there until your rounds are tearing through his body.

This is what it's all about. Kill without taking casualties. And both sides practiced it in Vietnam. And in World War Two. And in any fucking modern war.

Some of the forests in Europe, and especially the hedge row country in France provided excellent cover and concealment that both the Germans and Americans utilized. To say nothing of the rubble of blown up towns.

It was just as easy to make a mistake in World War Two as it was in Vietnam.

Advance too quickly, or not quickly enough when you're in an assault or retreat, find yourself where you're not supposed to be, and YOU WILL get your aases lit up by your own artillery or small arms fire. In fact this shit was commonplace in the ETO. Perhaps far more commonplace than in Vietnam in fact.

It's not intentional, and a battlefield is not a chess board. It's a very confused and confusing place.

I'm not in the habit of saying this, but unless you have actually been in combat, you really have no right to speak out on the subject. Because you don't know where you're coming from from.

However, 155 and myself do know where we're coming from here. We know all too fucking well where we're coming from.

You don't set out to kill your own people. It the last fucking thing in the world that you want to do, and you will feel like shit for the rest of your life if you're involved in such an incident.

As I said, shit happens. I got sixteen of my own people killed. Two, because they were stupid enough to listen to me, and 14 because I was stupid enough to listen to my squad leader when I should have disobeyed his orders. Both cases accidental, unintentional, and unfortunate, and I have that on my conscience, and always will.

LIKE I SAID, SHIT HAPPENS.

And unless you've been there yourself, you have absolutely no right to judge.

Enough said on the matter.

Probably some on my leftist groups that I read. Things seem to be one way or the other so a person is not suppose to believe anything but what the Big corporations spew. What if I said I got it from his parents reporting what they were getting from letters. ? Then you could counter his parents were upset by his death. I wonder if they have written books and quoted his letters. His parents were upset and they were more upset that Bush got up before a crowd after he should have known about the true facts about Pat Tillman and used his death as an example of a heroes death. Years later his mother is still disturbed by what transpired and they are still investigating what happened.. The last I heard....

His parents would be upset in any event. One does not like to lose one's children. Especially in a controversial conflict.

Again, ill advised on the part of the Army to initially conceal the true facts of the incident, but nothing sinister happened here. Death is just generally easier to take if it's a result of hostile fire in the line of duty, and the Army knew this and tried to react humanely and compassionately for the sake of Tillman's parents.

Unfortunately, it backfired. But it does not mean some dark, sinister conspiracy was afoot here.

Just a lack of judgement perhaps, which is something the Army has been known for.

As I said, SHIT HAPPENS.

I think when many people say the real war is in Afghanistan they underestimate the terrain in that country.

The arguement could be made had they had an Afghan surge it would have provided a safer environment that Pat Tillman was fighting in.

Then comes the whole issue of whether a celebrity soldier should have SAS body guards like Prince Harry, and I'm assuming Wills also had (in his chopper), who would probably put their necks out to save royalty the same way our secret service in theory would the President.

The Tillman saga, wasn't pretty, and the Army just made the situation worse.

<<<<This is what it's all about. Kill without taking casualties. And both sides practiced it in Vietnam. And in World War Two. And in any fucking modern war.>>>>

That's common sense for any soldier worth his salt.

<<<It's not intentional, and a battlefield is not a chess board. It's a very confused and confusing place.>>>

Well Rob, like in Iraq, they have around a 100 aircraft, choppers, in the air all over the country, tanks, artillery, and then to a much greater degree than in past battle fields, the blue force tracking system somewhat brings it all together, at least making the chaos easier to manage for the big brass in the chief tee-pee.

Now again it's not chess, because the guy looking at tactical display can't physically see the terrorist positions, or sniff out a ambush.

It's not a 100 percent lock down of Iraq, but the surge speaks for itself.

But all that shit goes out the window in a country like Afghanistan. And probably Vietnam too with it's dense jungles, valley, and rivers.

In a place like Vietnam or Afghanistan, the individual soldier is probably in more danger, simply because of the isolation from the big army.

We obviously didn't completely conquer the terrain, and depending on who you talk to, we didn't conquer charlie.

It's just rough. Afghanistan is the same way. Don't know if you can conquer it, and don't know why you would want to in the first place.

If we can't operate tanks there, why fucking bother?

I ask the fucking question before of 155, and I guess he thinks I'm a complete fucking idiot, but would you rather run a military operation in Antarctica or Afghanistan?

Take your pick?

As unattractive as Antarctica would be, my arm chair quarterback money is on the south pole.

Afghanistan and Pakistan, because of the limitations of fully loaded choppers in high altitude and the difficulty in terrain it makes it ideal Indian country.

Rob, Ironically the Tillman's were bitching about the Iraq war, when Tillman technically was getting his wish and going to Afghanistan.

Correct me on that, their whole line was that they did not object to Afghanistan.

Now the Army really fucked the dog trying to aggrandize the story, but the whole irony is the bitching.

Yeh it sucks to see your people die, but what the fuck? He did not die for oil in Iraq.

He died fighting the "real" WOT in Afghanistan.

And if the Army wouldn't have even dared run that fish tale by the family, they may have ran their mouths, but it would be as just another Cindy Sheehan.