According to this article, 21-year-old Galen Wilson has 20 confirmed kills in four months in Iraq. How does the millitary confirm kills in battle.
This seems problematic considering that often in the fog of war; it may be unclear who actually killed a person. Well?
My guess is that a sniper would likely see the kill in his scope.
Don’t officers have to report on the activities of the men under their command? Would it be covered in that?
There ain’t no such thing. No way. Noplace. No how.
Ground combat is confused, fast and deadly. There is no way that any unit could award confirmed kills to soldiers, even if they wanted to, which they don’t. How the heck could you? Examine the game tape and wait for the autopsy report?
I admit tankers like to paint kill rings on their tubes. (My, doesn’t that sound dirty?) But those are highly unofficial, usually awarded by a company commander.
So no solider has any such thing.
I wouldn’t be too sure about snipers being able to count kills It appears this guy did.
If you can see the hit, or the body afterwards it counts as a kill.
Did you read the article? This guy is a sniper. He probably has one or two men with him, using binoculars to target and perform target damage assessment. These guys do keep count, and if anyone on the battle field could keep an accurate score, it would be snipers.
Sorry PIS, I have to disagree with you. Although maybe it is not confirmed for ‘official records’, there are people with confirmed kills. See Carlos Hathcock, who had plenty of confirmed kills (93 to be exact) and he also had plenty of un/non-confirmed kills.
To the best of my knowledge, a confirmed kill means there are either (1) witnesses or (2) a body. This is usually directed towards snipers, but could go to an individual military member, a tank unit, fighter pilot (aces), etc.
No I did not read the article.
But I suspect we are agreed. There is no such thing as a confirmed kill officially. If someone wants to count coup, that is his own business.
Speaking of counting coup, there are reports that some British soldiers (both in the Malayan troubles and the Falklands campaign) collected ears as trophies and evidence of their prowess in battle.
Americans did this in Vietnam, from what I have read in various books.
I think the answer we are groping towards is that:
Some soldiers do, when it is neccesary and practical. Snipers obviously do, because usually they are the only ones doing the shooting, and also because it’s part of their job. The majority of a sniper’s work in Western armies would be reconnaisance and intelligence gathering, as opposed to actually shooting. When someone does get shot, especially important looking people with binoculars on their chests and stars on their lapels, the sniper will of course make a note of it for later reporting back at base. Tanks will probably also do it for other tanks, since the number of enemy tanks detroyed on a given day is a rather important piece of information to have.
In typical ground combat, that is, when there are about 1,000 people shooting in all directions and no one can hear or see anything from the smoke and explosions, obviously this becomes more problematic. During an attack, for example, the attacking side’s main goal is to advance, take, and hold ground. How many individual enemy soldiers are killed is really of secondary importance, and of course, there’s usually no way to tell WHO shot WHO, bullets don’t have names on them.
So you’re sitting in your hole, see someone in your sights, fire a few rounds, the guy falls down. Did he die? Will he die later? Were you even the one who shot him? Who knows, who cares.
The “confirmed kills” thing used in the media is really just for the sake of drama than anything else. Aside from exceptional circumstances (i.e. the little blurb you get when you’re awarded a medal for leaping into a bunker and taking out the all 10 of the enemy inside or some such reckless bravery), The military certainly doesn’t give two hoots about how many enemy ground pounders you’ve personally dispatched, even if there was some way to know for sure.
I didn’t know about this practise in The Falklands, but whole heads were taken in Kenya by British soldiers.
Body count became important in VN and was, likely, greatly exaggerated. Enemy KIA’s would have been a part of after action reports, but crediting kills to specific people was unlikely, unless the person was to be recommended for some exemplary performance… Enemy equipment destroyed would also be part of an A/A report. Snipers would, necessarily, submit a report of their success, not to ‘count coup’ but, to evaluate their effectiveness.
Reminding individuals of the kills they may have made would be detrimental and just plain poor leadership.
Collecting ears was primarily done by PRU’s and maybe Kit Carson Scouts, who were “Cheiu Hoi’s”, or repatriated NVA and VC. Some of these people were paid a bounty, hence the ears.
As to the book mentioned, and others written, while I’m not judging these authors, you do need to remember that one of their objectives is to sell their books and they would have incentive to embellish. I don’t have a big problem w/ that, within reason.