I’ve been continually revising my “Draftee’s Journey” post each time the question comes up. Here is the latest version, backed by significant research from the Director of Selective Service Lewis B. Hershey’s four reports to the president.

I’ve also pretty much decided on a senior/Honors thesis topic, and will be contacting the government documents librarian at my university library shortly to order copies of the requisite microfilm well in advance; the history of the FFRS/GFRS/GFRC (essentially the replacement system) within the administrative history of the European Theater of Operations, RG 498, NARA. I figure ETOUSA G-1, Selective Service, and War Department documentation will also be helpful.

As usual, r/history was a mistake. I’m not seeing a single substantive, sourced answer in that thread, but then again it’s not r/askhistorians, and is, sadly, a default.

u/AVC095

The three U.S. infantry divisions that landed on D-Day suffered some of the highest casualties of the war, the 4th and 29th Infantry Divisions being leaps and bounds above them all for service in just one theater. The airborne divisions suffered less casualties, in particular because they were pulled completely out of the line to refit prior to major operations. Infantry divisions were not, and because of the "90 division gamble," stayed at the front essentially continuously.

The 359th Infantry Regiment of the 90th Infantry Division transited over Utah Beach during midday on June 6 and suffered 2 casualties. The division was a poor performer for the first few months of its service, went through several commanders, and consideration was made to "go British" and break it up for use as replacements. The division toughened up, and soon became an esteemed formation.

The odds of becoming some type of casualty as an infantryman in the Infantry branch were quite high; 15.5% were killed in action, 62.2% were wounded in action, 2.1% were missing in action, and 7.4% were taken prisoner, for a cumulative 87.2% casualty rate. The majority of casualties in infantry and airborne divisions occurred in the infantry units.

D-DAY LOSSES

a: Indicated figure is casualty total only. Unit records do not differentiate among killed, wounded, and missing.

b: Indicated figure is casualty approximation based upon unit records that do not specify number of killed, wounded, and missing.

a: Indicated figure is casualty total only. Unit records do not differentiate among killed, wounded, and missing.

f: see Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, 300. ("D-Day losses of 1,259 including 156 known killed and 756 missing, presumed captured or killed.")

g: Ibid., 284. ("Total D-Day casualties calculated in August 1944 amounted to 1,240 including 182 known killed and 501 missing and presumed captured or killed.")

Surviving D-Day didn’t mean you were out of the woods. Infantry units experienced a mind-bogglingly high turnover rate. As part of a previous answer, I studied Company L of the 134th Infantry Regiment, 35th Infantry Division. They entered combat on July 15, 1944, and by the end of the war, 44 of the 192 original men that crossed the Channel had been killed or died of wounds, and just 11 didn't become casualties. Something north of 500 men served with Company L in combat, most of whom became casualties at least once

Sources:

Balkoski, Joseph. Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 2004

Balkoski, Joseph. Utah Beach: The Amphibious Landing and Airborne Operations on D-Day. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 2006

United States. Department of the Army. FM 101-10-1 Field Manual Staff Officers' Field Manual Organizational, Technical and Logistic Data (Unclassified Data). Washington: Department of the Army, 1976.

United States. United States Army Adjutant General's Corps. Army Battle Casualties and Nonbattle Deaths in World War II Final Report, 7 December 1941-31 December 1946. Washington: Statistical and Accounting Branch, Office of the Adjutant General, 1953.

I just want to take a moment to thank Dan Monroe, Director and CEO of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.

His continued neglect of the Phillips Library Collections, and ensuring that the collection was unavailable both physically and digitally to researchers over the past 2 years (and for the forseeable future) has proven an immense frustration to my research.

While I have been fortunate that many early histories of slavery in Massachusetts were effectively compilations of primary sources, there are a number of sources in the Phillips Collection that are vital to finishing this project - such as the papers of the first VP of the Essex Institute, the library's predecessor, who owned slaves in Antigua until slavery's abolishment there in 1834.

But a thank you is still in order, I suppose, because as frustrating as it has been I've had to get creative with conducting my research which will no doubt prove beneficial in the long run.

I've been reading through Bidwell and Graham's Firepower as a precursor to a short literature review for my thesis, and though a substantial contribution to our understanding of British Army doctrine in the early 20th century, its description of tank doctrine falls into the pit of the Liddell-Hart paradigm; disappointing, but not unexpected for a book of its era, since Liddell-Hart's arguments held a hypnotic attractiveness to them.

Effectively the Liddell-Hart paradigm maintains that British interwar development, mainly in tanks, was retarded by the resistance of a conservative general staff, and an even more conservative and traditional cavalry arm. Both of these claims are highly spurious; certainly, one would expect men within both these organisations to be of a more conservative mindset, but there is little evidence of either branch being more resistant to change than any other part of the British Army. Fortunately, Liddell-Hart's influence on debates surrounding the interwar British army is slowly waning, as his academic credentials have been increasingly debunked by successive generations of scholars, but they still persist outside of academic circles - the handiness of the explanation, and the longer-standing idea of cavalrymen as technophobes has kept Liddell-Hart's arguments persuasive.

So aside from me rambling about my own hobby-horse in the historiography, I'd like to ask other historians in this thread: what are your least favourite persistent mythologies/spurious historiographical arguments, in your own fields?

Some works refuting Liddell Hart:

David French, 'The Mechanisation of the British Cavalry,' War in History, 10, 3, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1191/0968344503wh279oa

Gervase Philips, 'Scapegoat Arm: Twentieth Century Cavalry in Anglophone Historiography', The Journal of Military History, 70, 1, 2007.

I've posted about this occasionally but I think one of the more fascinating subjects I've come across that I dabble in occasionally, in large part from some extensive road travel I've taken in the area, is the bronze age in Oman. There were a series of metallurgical archeology studies done in Oman in the 1970s that reached some conclusions that I find to be utterly fascinating, most notably the idea that based on the amount of smelting that was being done of Omani copper, that ancient Oman must have been forested, and that its deforestation to smelt copper led to its present desertification. That's mind boggling to me, but as far as I can tell there haven't been any updated studies since the original ones in the 1970s.

This week some news emerged about the discovery of the oldest such settlement found in Oman: http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/oman/oldest-bronze-age-tower-workshop-found-in-oman-1.2176796

The news itself I think is interesting, but it seems to be part of a wider expedition. I have no idea when they'll finish their work and as I said my interest in this is completely amateurish and outside my actual area of expertise, but I'm really interested to see what they find :)

One of my friends just watched Wolf Hall for the first time and is giving me a continual earful of her thoughts and feelings on the English Reformation. It's the source of all my joy in life right now.

What are people's thoughts on John Boswell's The Kindness of Strangers, about child abandonment in late antiquity through the Middle Ages? I like it a lot, much more than Boswell's most famous work, not because I don't love the history of same-sex unions but because I just really love reading about child oblates.

I have created /r/Ryukyu/ as a way to share links about the history and culture of the Ryukyu islands, nowadays part of Okinawa prefecture and colonised by Japan. All participants are welcome.

Saw my first opera last weekend. Wagner's Parzifal at the Metropolitan Opera. 6 hours of... German. It was an intense, strange experience that involved several thousand gallons of fake blood. I enjoyed it but I'm not sure I'm going to rush back.

Work on the book continues. Chapters 1 and 2 basically done, chapter 3 in progress... 10 chapters total. It's getting there, though...

Is the a symbol or collection of symbols that represent the Sōhei Monks in a similar way to the various crucifixes of the Monastic Military Orders.

I got this pin to round out a costume last year from a collectables shop. The vendor told me it was early 1900s Prussian cavalry, but when asked about it recently I tried to do some digging but couldn't find anything resembling it. Does anyone recognise it?

Thanks for the data, the numbers are far worse than I would have guessed. Do you have any numbers for Canada, Britain, or France?