Body count

Last updated

Edward III's herald, the crowned king of arms, counting the dead after the battle of Crecy Edward III counting the dead on the battlefield of Crecy.jpg
Edward III's herald, the crowned king of arms, counting the dead after the battle of Crécy

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 multiple killings, such as the actions of death squads or serial killers.

Contents

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.

The term has since been used to describe the number of sexual partners a person has engaged with. [1]

Military use

"Body count" figures have a long history in military planning and propaganda.

Sassanian Empire

According to Procopius, when the Persians were about to march to a war, the king would sit on the throne and many baskets would be set before him. The men of the army would pass along the baskets one by one, each throwing one arrow in the baskets, which would then be sealed with the king's seal. When the army returned to Persia, each man would take an arrow from the baskets, and the number of casualties would be determined by the number of remaining arrows. [2]

The Holocaust

During the Holocaust in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and other eastern areas, killing was done by Nazi Germany's military police forces, including Einsatzgruppen , the SD, and Wehrmacht police battalions, in massacres by shooting the victims. [3] Such units measured their progress by counting the number of people killed. [4] And the number of killed people was 1.5 million Jews. These murder operations took place under the guise of anti-partisan warfare, but in reality few of those killed were actually partisans. [5]

Vietnam War

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 U.S. Army used body counts to show that the U.S. was winning the war, leading to falsified and inflated enemy body count numbers. The Army's theory was that eventually, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army would lose after the attrition warfare.

Historian Christian Appy states "search and destroy was the principal tactic; and the enemy body count was the primary measure of progress" in the US strategy of attrition. Search and destroy was a term to describe operations aimed at flushing the Viet Cong out of hiding, while body count was the measuring stick for operation success. Appy claims that American commanders exaggerated body counts by 100 percent. [6] This method was controversial, due to two issues. The first is regarding the counting of unarmed civilians killed in actions as enemy combatants in free-fire zone [7] as it was estimated that around 220,000 civilians killed by US/ARVN battle operations were miscounted as "enemy KIA". [8] Another issue is inflation [9] [10] and fabrication of body count in after-action reports, which is reported to have given false and inaccurate casualty figures for enemy dead. [11] [12]

Rhodesian Bush War

During the Rhodesian Bush War the Rhodesian Security Forces were focused on achieving a high 'kill rate' against the communist guerrilla forces. While this motivated the Rhodesian personnel to kill large numbers of guerrillas, it may have led them to attack civilians and murder prisoners. The emphasis on the 'kill rate' may have partly been the result of the influence of American and Australian Vietnam War veterans who volunteered to fight for Rhodesia. [13]

Iraq War

In the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US military adopted an official policy of not counting deaths. General Tommy Franks' statement that "we don't do body counts" was widely reported. Critics claimed that Franks was only attempting to evade bad publicity, while supporters pointed to the failure of body counts to give an accurate impression of the state of the war in Vietnam. At the end of October 2005, it became public that the US military had been counting Iraqi fatalities since January 2004 but only those killed by insurgents and not those killed by the US forces. [14]

Slang usage

The term "body count" has been used as a euphemistic slang term for how many people one has had sex with. This usage gained further popularity on the social media app TikTok in 2020, where users would ask strangers what their "body count" was. [1] [15]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vietnam War</span> Cold War conflict in Southeast Asia from 1955 to 1975

The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was a major conflict of the Cold War. While the war was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, the north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies, making the war a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. military involvement ending in 1973. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries officially becoming communist states by 1976.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Westmoreland</span> 25th Chief of Staff of the United States Army (1914–2005)

William Childs Westmoreland was a United States Army general, most notably commander of United States forces during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968. He served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1968 to 1972.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Casualties of the Iraq War</span> Iraq war casualties

Estimates of the casualties from the Iraq War have come in several forms, and those estimates of different types of Iraq War casualties vary greatly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tet Offensive</span> Military campaign during the Vietnam War

The Tet Offensive was a major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) launched a sneak attack on January 30, 1968, against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the United States Armed Forces and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. The name is the truncated version of the Lunar New Year festival name in Vietnamese, Tết Nguyên Đán, with the offense chosen during a holiday period as most ARVN personnel were on leave. The purpose of the wide-scale offensive by the Hanoi Politburo was to trigger political instability, in a belief that mass armed assault on urban centers would trigger defections and rebellions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Search and destroy</span> Military strategy

Search and destroy is a military strategy which consists of inserting infantry forces into hostile territory and directing them to search and then attack enemy targets before immediately withdrawing. First used as part of counterinsurgency operations during military conflicts in Southeast Asia such as the Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam War, the strategy was developed to take advantage of new technological capabilities available to Western militaries such as the helicopter, which allowed for the adoption of new tactics like the air assault.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vietnam War casualties</span> Civilian and military deaths during the Second Indochina War

Estimates of casualties of the Vietnam War vary widely. Estimates can include both civilian and military deaths in North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insurgency weapons and tactics</span> Firearms etc. in guerrilla warfare

Insurgency weapons and tactics (IWAT) are weapons and tactics, most often involving firearms or explosive devices, intended for use by insurgents to engage in guerrilla warfare against an occupier, or for use by rebels against an established government. One type of insurgency weapon are "homemade" firearms made by non-professionals, such as the Błyskawica (Lightning) submachine gun produced in underground workshops by the Polish resistance movement. Another weapon that is part of the conventional military arsenal, but which has been taken up to great effect by insurgents, is the RPG. Two examples of an improvised weapon used by insurgents would be the improvised explosive devices used in Iraq and the Molotov cocktails used against vehicles and tanks. Two tactics used by many insurgents are assassinations and suicide bomb attacks. The latter tactic is used when an insurgent has a bomb strapped to them or in their car, which provides a low-tech way for insurgents to get explosives close to critical enemy targets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hearts and Minds (Vietnam War)</span> 1960s US strategy popularised under President Lyndon B. Johnson

Hearts and Minds or winning hearts and minds refers to the strategy and programs used by the governments of Vietnam and the United States during the Vietnam War to win the popular support of the Vietnamese people and to help defeat the Viet Cong insurgency. Pacification is the more formal term for winning hearts and minds. In this case, however, it was also defined as the process of countering the insurgency. Military, political, economic, and social means were used to attempt to establish or reestablish South Vietnamese government control over rural areas and people under the influence of the Viet Cong. Some progress was made in the 1967–1971 period by the joint military-civilian organization called CORDS, but the character of the war changed from a guerrilla war to a conventional war between the armies of South and North Vietnam. North Vietnam won in 1975.

A free-fire zone in U.S. military parlance is a fire control measure, used for coordination between adjacent combat units. The definition used in the Vietnam War by U.S. troops may be found in field manual FM 6-20:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operation Masher</span> 1966 battle of the Vietnam War

Operation Masher, also known as Operation White Wing, was the largest search and destroy mission that had been carried out in the Vietnam War up until that time. It was a combined mission of the United States Army, Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), and Republic of Korea Army (ROK) in Bình Định Province on the central coast of South Vietnam. The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) 3rd Division, made up of two regiments of North Vietnamese regulars and one regiment of main force Viet Cong (VC) guerrillas, controlled much of the land and many of the people of Bình Định Province, which had a total population of about 800,000. A CIA report in 1965 said that Binh Dinh was "just about lost" to the communists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operation Cedar Falls</span> Vietnam War military operation

Operation Cedar Falls was a military operation of the Vietnam War conducted primarily by US forces that took place from 8 to 26 January 1967. The aim of the massive search-and-destroy operation was to eradicate the Iron Triangle, an area northwest of Saigon that had become a major stronghold of the Viet Cong (VC).

During the Second Indochina War, better known as the Vietnam War, a distinctive land warfare strategy and organization was used by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF) or better known as the Viet Cong (VC) in the West, and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) or North Vietnamese Army (NVA) to defeat their American and South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) opponents. These methods involved closely integrated political and military strategy – what was called dau tranh - literally "to struggle". The National Liberation Front, (NLF) was an umbrella of front groups, sympathizers and allies set up by the rulers of North Vietnam to conduct the insurgency in South Vietnam. The NLF also included fully armed formations- regional and local guerrillas, and the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF). The PLAF was the "Main Force" – the Chu Luc or full-time soldiers of the NLF's military wing. Many histories lump both the NLF and the armed formations under the term "Viet Cong" or "VC" in common usage. Both were tightly interwoven and were in turn controlled by the North. Others consider the Viet Cong, or "VC" to primarily refer to the armed elements. The term PAVN, identifies regular troops of the North Vietnamese Army or NVA as they were commonly known by their Western opponents. Collectively, both forces- the southern armed wing and the regulars from the north were part of PAVN.

Loss exchange ratio is a figure of merit in attrition warfare. It is usually relevant to a condition or state of war where one side depletes the resources of another through attrition. Specifically and most often used as a comparator in aerial combat, where it is known as a kill-ratio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operation Speedy Express</span> 1968–69 American Vietnam War operation

Operation Speedy Express was a controversial military operation conducted by the United States Army's 9th Infantry Division during the Vietnam War in the Mekong Delta provinces of Kiến Hòa and Vĩnh Bình. The operation, led by Major-General Julian Ewell, was part of counterinsurgency operations by the United States Armed Forces which targeted the Viet Cong (VC). U.S. forces aimed to interdict VC lines of communication and prevent Viet Cong personnel from establishing outposts in the region via the operation. The U.S. claimed the operation was successful in achieving its objectives, although the VC denied this and claimed the operation failed to stop their activities in the region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NLF and PAVN battle tactics</span> North Vietnamese and Viet Cong tactics in the Vietnam War

VC and PAVN battle tactics comprised a flexible mix of guerrilla and conventional warfare battle tactics used by Viet Cong (VC) and the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) to defeat their U.S. and South Vietnamese (GVN/ARVN) opponents during the Vietnam War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander D. Shimkin</span> American war correspondent

Alexander Demitri "Alex" Shimkin was an American war correspondent who was killed in Vietnam. He is notable for his investigation of non-combatant casualties in Operation Speedy Express.

In armed conflicts, the civilian casualty ratio is the ratio of civilian casualties to combatant casualties, or total casualties. The measurement can apply either to casualties inflicted by or to a particular belligerent, casualties inflicted in one aspect or arena of a conflict or to casualties in the conflict as a whole. Casualties usually refer to both dead and injured. In some calculations, deaths resulting from famine and epidemics are included.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operation Crazy Horse</span>

Operation Crazy Horse, named after Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, was a search and destroy mission during the Vietnam War conducted by military forces of the United States, South Vietnam, and the Republic of South Korea in two valleys in Bình Định Province of South Vietnam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Order of battle for the Viet Cong</span>

The order of battle for the Viet Cong concerned a contested American intelligence issue of the Vietnam War. Arising In the mid-1960s, its focus was the count of enemy combatants. Often called the order of battle controversy, the debate came to divide the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and challenge military intelligence. The politics and strategy of the war became involved in the debate.

The Vietnam War body count controversy centers on the counting of enemy dead by the United States Armed Forces during the Vietnam War (1955–1975). There are issues around killing and counting unarmed civilians (non-combatants) as enemy combatants, as well as inflating the number of actual enemy who were killed in action (KIA). For search and destroy operations, as the objective was not to hold territory or secure populations, victory was assessed by having a higher enemy body count.

References

  1. 1 2 Salmin, Dee (3 November 2021). "Body Count: What's the current obsession? And does it even matter?". Australian Broadcasting Corporation . Retrieved 26 September 2022.
  2. Prokopios, The Wars of Justinian, translated by H. B. Dewing, Hackett Publishing, 2014, ISBN   9781624661723, page
  3. Beorn 2014, p. 6, 126.
  4. Beorn 2014, p. 69.
  5. Beorn 2014, p. 7.
  6. Appy, Christian G. (2000). Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam. Univ of North Carolina Press. pp. 153–56.
  7. Lewy, Guenter (1978). America in Vietnam. Oxford University Press. pp. 450–1. ISBN   9780199874231.
  8. Bellamy, Alex J. (29 September 2017). East Asia's Other Miracle: Explaining the Decline of Mass Atrocities. Oxford University Press. pp. 33–34. ISBN   9780191083785.
  9. "Archives - Los Angeles Times". Los Angeles Times . 31 January 1991.
  10. Sorley, Lewis (2007). A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. Harvest. pp. 21–2. ISBN   9780156013093.
  11. Stanton, Shelby L. (2003). The Rise and Fall of an American Army. Random House Publishing Group. pp. xvi–xvii. ISBN   9780891418276.
  12. "The On-Going Battle for the Soul of the Army | Small Wars Journal". smallwarsjournal.com. Retrieved 31 May 2018.
  13. de Boer, Marno (November–December 2011). "Rhodesia's Approach to Counterinsurgency: A Preference for Killing" (PDF). Military Review. XCI (6): 39, 44.
  14. "U.S. Quietly Issues Estimate of Iraqi Civilian Casualties", The New York Times
  15. Curtis, Liam (13 January 2020). "What does body count mean? TikTok's latest trend explained!". HITC. Retrieved 27 December 2022.

Bibliography