Bodycount

A body count is the total number of people killed in a particular event. In combat, a body count is often based on the number of confirmed kills, but occasionally only an estimate. Often used in reference to military combat, the term can also refer to any situation involving a number of deaths, such as those of a serial killer.

The military gathers such figures for a variety of reasons, such as determining the need for continuing operations, estimating efficiency of new and old weapons systems, and planning follow-up operations.

Body count figures have a long history in military planning and propaganda. In ancient battles, the penises (and sometimes the scrotums as well) of killed and dying enemies were collected from the field to count the dead.

According to Procopius, when the Persians are about to march to a war, the king sits on the throne and many baskets are set before him. The men of the army pass along the baskets one by one, each throwing one arrow in the baskets, which are then sealed with the king's seal. When the army returns to Persia, each man takes an arrow, and the number of casualties will be determined by the number of remaining arrows.

Since the goal of the United States in the Vietnam War was not to conquer North Vietnam but rather to ensure the survival of the South Vietnamese government, measuring progress was difficult. All the contested territory was theoretically "held" already. Instead, the US Army used body counts to show that the US was winning the war. The Army's theory was that eventually, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army would lose after the attrition warfare.

According to historian Christian Appy, "search and destroy was the principal tactic; and the enemy body count was the primary measure of progress" in General Westmoreland’s war of attrition. Search and destroy was coined as a phrase in 1965 to describe missions aimed at flushing the Viet Cong out of hiding, while the body count was the measuring stick for the success of any operation. Competitions were held between units for the highest number of Vietnamese killed in action, or KIAs. Army and marine officers knew that promotions were largely based on confirmed kills. The pressure to produce confirmed kills resulted in massive fraud. One study revealed that 61 % of American commanders considered that body counts were grossly exaggerated.[2]

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