May he rest in peace.  I don't know what the current “rules” on war casualties are but I would argue that any deaths that are tenuously connected in time or circumstance to the war should not be considered casualties.  Otherwise, war death toll numbers might always have asterisks by them, making them less meaningful.  Say hypothetically that a bomb were dropped by a terrorist without detonating, and then lost, and the terrorist were apprehended without him causing any other harm.  Say that the bomb was rediscovered 100 years later to explode on accident and kill a million people.  Would including those numbers as terrorism casualties provide anything meaningful?  Would the lesson be that we should all of a sudden spend more money on anti-terrorism efforts?  Or would the lesson be that accidents sometimes happen?  Also, if an archaeologist were to discover a spear from the Peloponnesian war, only to prick his finger on it and get it infected from ancient fecal matter, would it count as a war casualty?

That was kind of shocking to read.  Does this happen often?

My brother is in EOD but is about to get out of the Army.  His skill set would probably transfer better over in Germany than in the States.

Ha, considering what qualifies as “strange” these days, I would say not really.  I just think he likes to blow stuff up, and he needed a specialty somewhere along the line.