Body Count
brinktk
Active member
Probably because it is counterproductive when fighting a counter insurgency. It also begs the brass to inflate numbers for their evals and soldiers to shoot everyone and count that as part of the count.
I read a book covering an operation around Con Thien called "Operation Buffalo" that occured in July of 1967. It was the first book I read about Vietnam when I was about 13 years old and I read it because I knew my dad was in the unit that was hardest hit at the time, yet, he never once talked to me about it until years later after I was a combat vet myself. By all accounts the Marines of Alpha and Bravo company 1st Bn 9th Marines inflicted hundreds of deaths on the NVA throughout that first week in July. But, July 2 1967 was also the worst day for the Marine Corps as far as taking KIAs for the entire war and a large chunk of those KIAs came from first Bravo, and then Alpha companies....when 90% of your company is killed or wounded in a day, I'm not sure a higher body count is much of a consolation.
The day I got hit we lost 3 soldiers in my platoon killed and 12 wounded in a matter of about 2 minutes. We hit back hard for the next 15-20 minutes until the enemy vanished since they knew Apaches would be on station in that time. We found blood, bandages, casings, and drag marks...even a few weapons. But no bodies. I'm not sure it would have mattered if we did, they weren't going to bring my buddies back and the wounded were going to have to live with the carnage of those moments forever body count or no body count.
As for me, I left the aid station to be back with my platoon because we had more missions to do.
On my second tour we had implemented the small kill team concept and were racking up quite a lot of enemy KIAs. I was an SKT team leader and I made sure the guys in my team were professional about our task. Keeping count of how many we killed is meaningless and I think it can push ones mind into darkness....I preferred to to keep count of those that we saved, whether it be the unit we were operating for or the civilians we were trying to protect. That's just my take on it though...
LeEnfield
Active member
You never know just how many people in an opposing army would have died during any action as many would have been taken away for treatment and then died else where. The last thing you need to start doing in an action is running around the battlefield to see if the person you have just shot is dead or just wounded. The main thing is do you control the battlefield at the end of the action which would make you the winner of this event, if you don't then you will never have an idea just how many people have died to push you of the battlefield.
Killing the enemy was the objective , during tet at least 110,000 were killed in two months this by count , General Giap expected loses but nothing like this , the Americans were brutal . The War was won for all practical purposes , the problem being is the American people were being bombarded with pictures of Flag draped coffins of dead Americans and no longer supported the War . The War was won on the battle field and lost in American living rooms in front of the TV .
brinktk
Active member
It was a different war with different objectives. For you, killing the enemy was how you measured success. For me, it was if we found less murdered bodies in the river from sectarian violence. Or if the locals could go to the market or send their kids to school without worrying if a carbomb was going to kill them.
There was a wedding party north of Baghdad of two Shia families coming together. Weddings in Iraq are big deals and there are usually hundreds of people in attendance. It was supposed to be the best day in these families lives. A group of al Qaeda in Iraq pulled in...it was a massacre. They bound the men and put them on their knees. The kids were killed first, drowned or strangled in front of their parents. Then the women, raped and then shot in the head in front of their fathers, brothers, and husbands...then the men, their heads sawed off. They did this over the course of hours. Over a hundred dead altogether. Because they were Shia, and because they were hoping the Shia would retaliate in kind...which they did....all just to show we couldn't protect the locals. There were countless acts like this throughout my war.
Our objective was the people. Every time I bagged bodies from a carbomb it hit home. Did I want to kill those that did these things, of course. When I could I did, if I could still, I would and deep down I hope for the opportunity to do it again. But I can kill and we can kill all we want, it's not going to change anything until we figure out a way to destroy what motivates people to do these atrocious acts. In the meantime I would prefer to be a guardian, a protector of those who cannot protect themselves.
The world would like America to be the protector of the free world but we cannot do this , we simply have too much strife at home red against blue , white against black , black against white , illegal immigration , our Country has gotten so liberal so politically correct that it has become unsustainable , we are in a state of morals and values collapse .
Remington 1858
Active member
Body Count works okay as a measure of military success in cases where the battlefield is isolated or the total resources of the enemy are known. In the case of the Pacific War, the number of Japanese troops on an island could usually be accurately gauged through intelligence sources. Then it's simply a case of simple arithmetic. Number of enemy dead, plus number of prisoners subtracted from the starting total. It works when the enemy can't be reinforced or evacuated or where the enemy has finite manpower resources such as Nazi Germany in the final days of the war. It doesn't work in situations such as Vietnam where the NVA could replace it's losses through infiltration that the U.S. was unable to stop. In the case of an insurgency such as occurred in Mindanao in the Philippines during the early part of the 20th Century, success is determined by the absence or reduction of incidents by the insurrectionists. Capture of territory in either case is irrelevant.