This would have been the opening of my assignment but I'm afrade that it would get dinged as fluf:

Author’s preamble: The impact of war upon a people is difficult to understand. For the historian, impact of war on a nation or a region can be effectively measured in many different ways. A few of these measures are the redrawing of boarders, the rise and fall of governments, the building and shattering of alliances. Yet when the historian seeks to measurer the cost of war on a culture, little is left. What is left tends to be either a statistical record of the people (such as the number of people who died or left the area) or a global statement such as “they once spoke “A” but after years of post war occupation now speak “B”’. Such measures do little in the way of teaching us about the individual lives and a people’s culture that have been forever impacted.