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Previously they had just included all enlisted military deaths regardless of the cause / connection to the war?

Any insights on why that occurred / was that a common practice?

During WW2 the entire country was geared up to fight the war so any death in the military anywhere was by definition related to the war so I'd assume it did make sense then.

Yeah that makes sense, if the military was a fraction of the size and suddenly many times larger due to a war, of course all that activity, accidents, and etc were related to that war.

Later with a large standing army not directly participating it's far different.

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