Current Events > What do you think was the average K/D of a soldier who survived through a war

(+) Yeah! (+)

Kinda hard to explain what I mean but I'll try. Have just been watching a bunch of WW1 and WW2 history documentaries

Let's say a soldier kills an enemy before he kills him, in a situation where both were aware of each other's presence and trying to shoot each other. I know it doesn't quite work like this, but for argument's sake let's say it was 50-50 and the one who survived had the luck on his side.

The next day he gets into the same situation and wins again. It'd be a 25% chance he'd have killed his 2 enemies before at least one got him(I think) but he did it.

Now over long periods of time.. long enough to have served a full 12 months or whatever service length was, he'd have to have had incredible luck/skill to have even killed 5+ enemies without being killed himself

Makes me wonder if lots of soldiers who actually made it out mastered the art of avoiding dangerous combat. Prioritised taking cover over taking shots.

I know snipers and machine gunners blur this , but yeah for the average dude with a rifle, it seems incredible any survived who were constantly shooting at the enemy

Infinity

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Alright

You're kinda running into that old "a plane crashes on the border of two countries, where do you bury the survivors" chestnut.

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I know what you're saying haha. Let's say for argument's sake they die on the last day of their combat duty so the mathematics work. I should have described it as "seeing lots of combat" rather than surviving the war. Didn't want to describe soldiers who might have died 3 days into duty

I'm not certain that the average soldier would have ever even fired their weapon at an enemy, let alone killed anyone with it

And by "fired at an enemy" I mean that they saw an enemy physically and were intending to kill them when they fired.

Probably a tree fiddy (3.50) / 0

If they actually got a kill, it was usually like one, maybe two, assuming we mean basic soldier and not the more specalized roles.

It varies so much and depends on how you break it down. For example, from quick googling there were an estimated 60-70 million allied soldiers in WW2. There were also an estimated 12 million axis casualties. So the average was way under 1.

If you looked just at US special forces numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s it would be much higher than 1.

Most soldiers do not kill someone.

I think a lot of them never knew or it would be hard to calculate

from what little my father ever spoke about it, during his time In Vietnam a lot of the fighting happened at night or from/in heavy cover, where you would be firing at movement, or the sources of muzzle flashes

they wouldnt know how many had been killed until daylight or they secured the area I imagine in situations like that when you have half a platoon opening up on muzzle flashes or movement near the source of fire, which would be similar in trenches as well, its more how many the unit killed then being able to attribute most of them to an individual soldier

Like, which wars? The civil war, the French 100 years war, the Korean War, the Emu War, the War against Drugs?
theres a ton of them and its pretty hard to pinpoint the K/D of most of them, tbqh.

Alteres posted...

I think a lot of them never knew or it would be hard to calculate

from what little my father ever spoke about it, during his time In Vietnam a lot of the fighting happened at night or from/in heavy cover, where you would be firing at movement, or the sources of muzzle flashes

they wouldnt know how many had been killed until daylight or they secured the area I imagine in situations like that when you have half a platoon opening up on muzzle flashes or movement near the source of fire, which would be similar in trenches as well, its more how many the unit killed then being able to attribute most of them to an individual soldier

Interesting. Thanks for sharing