I'm 31 today. Which isn't a particularly remarkable birthday. No grand new opportunities are open to me today that were unavailable 24 hours ago. Although, I have been thinking a lot about being 31 in the last week. The strangest thing about getting older, for me at least, is that I find myself older than a growing fraction of the population. I'm older than the people in sitcoms, I'm older than people I work with, it is a strange feeling.
The hardest one for me to deal with is being older than the men and women I read about dying. Dying for whatever reason but dying before your 31 is tragic regardless of the circumstances. I feel like I'm just getting started, they never got the chance.
31 is a breakpoint in federal statistics about active duty military deaths. It is a categorical break and seemingly a statistical one as well. Going through the data available in the Defense Casualty Analysis System (https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/casualties.xhtml) it is easy to see that the majority of deaths occur in age groups younger than 31.
To date:
Operation Enduring Freedom, 1,642 men and women who never had a 31st birthday.
Operation New Dawn, 51 men and women who never had a 31st birthday.
Operation Iraqi Freedom, 3,481 men and women who never had a 31st birthday.
Totalling 5,174 men and women who willingly signed up and subsequently lost their lives before turning 31.
I come from a relatively small town. My high school had about 2,000 students. Double that, add a hundred or so. Think back to the assemblies in the gym and how many people were there. Now double that.
I don't mean to be a big downer here, the scale of military casualties over the last few years and the tragedy of their ages has just been weighing on my lately.
I guess my point here is that it's important to appreciate the people who willingly put themselves in harms way on days that we don't get off from work. It's a profoundly brave thing to step up and serve.
