Loss (military)
A loss (also: failure ) in the military refers to the loss of an operational resource .
Use of language
As a rule, the term is used in the plural and refers equally to people and material (for example: "The losses amounted to ten men, a tank and a helicopter"). Personnel losses can still be subdivided into those killed , wounded and missing .
For further limitation, one speaks of irretrievable losses , which excludes the possibility of a temporary incapacity to fight due to injury or damage. Irrecoverable personal losses z. B. are prisoners of war , war invalids , but also combatants who have died from illness or accidents .
Military vehicles that return from combat so badly damaged that further use does not seem sensible are written off as a loss .
Terms in other languages
In the English language there is analogous to the German the term casualties for losses. These are broken down into those killed in action (KIA) , those wounded in action (WIA) and those missing in action (MIA) .
Colloquial coding also takes place in the Russian army. Fallen are referred to as двухсотые (two hundred) and wounded as трехсотые (three hundred). These designations go back to an order issued by the Soviet Ministry of Defense after the war in Afghanistan that standardized freight designations. According to this, Cargo 200 is about a fallen in a zinc coffin.
Web links
- Lists of losses from the First World War:
- German Empire
- Editions digitized by the Austrian National Library : Austria-Hungary (online at ANNO ).
- Russia
Individual evidence
- ↑ Большой словарь русских поговорок. - М: Олма Медиа Групп. В. М. Мокиенко, Т. Г. Никитина. 2007, under the Lemma Груз