[drjoe]

Well, compared to the general population combat deaths don't really make much of an impact. What drags down the 'average' life span back in those days was the horrendous mortality in childhood from infectious diseases and the one in twelve mortality of having babies. If you lived up to the age of forty or so and for a kid got past the scything of infectious disease, the mortality of child bearing and the moderate size mortality of accidental death [it is astonishing how many people died falling off of horses] you stood an excellent chance of making it into your sixties and up. It is my impression that heart disease and cancer were not as important a cause of death than as they are now.

[azhenfud]

"Well, compared to the general population combat deaths don't really make much of an impact."

Pardon? Maybe not in today's combat. However, 600,000+ deaths of men aged 17-39 over a four year span covering a territory having roughly one third today's population is hardly insignificant and would surely affect the ALS numbers. I don't see how war deaths on and off the battlefields couldn't be a prime influencing factor....