Memorial Day is a federal holiday that honors and mourns American military personnel who died while performing their duties in service to the United States Armed Forces. The USA has been in 79 wars since 1776 .   Click on that to see the details, but in every one of them, military life was lost.  Total casualties ( deaths and wounded ) of the major ones: American Revolutionary  50,000 1812                                     20,000 Mexican-American            17,435 Civil                                 1,129,418 WWI                                 320,518 WWII                             1,076,245 Korean                             128,650 Vietnam                            211,454 Afghanistan                       22,266 Iraq                                     36,710 It is estimated that approximately 2.4% of military combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq were female . For all of the 79 wars, 1,354,664 were killed and 1,498,240 wounded.  As a percent of deaths relative to the nation