I did not mean to turn this into a discussion of the morality of killing people. A separate and odd morality takes hold on the battlefield.
But I restate, no modern military (AFAIK) adjudicates claims of kills. If you see a book (as I did) by a Marine sniper with X number of ‘confirmed kills’ it is all hype. While I could see a platoon commander or a company having some sort of headcount contest, it certainly could not go any higher.
Thing of what it would take, investigations, statements and whatnot. That is not going to happen in a big way on a battlefield.
I took a couple of potshots at people. I have no idea if I hit them, although I was trying to. I was not willing to hang around to see if they went down or not.
Even the RAF during the Battle of Britain did not have an official count of kills by each pilot. Why bother?
Given evidence to the contrary, nobody no place at no time can make a legitimate claim of a certain number of personal kills on the (ground, infantry-type) battlefield.
In the Vietnam war, (don’t know if you consider that “modern”), there was a lot of pressure on field commanders to capture body counts. These counts were used for political reasons, to justify that the war was going well (whatever that means). Body counts were captured not only by recovering dead enemy, but by witness statements that testified to a kill occurring. Naturally, there was a problem with grossly inflated body counts.
Also, when people are put in for combat medals, witness statements are entered into the supporting documentation, and inevitably these are going to include some killin’ stories.
My question would not be how these figures are captured, but whether a running tally is kept for each soldier, where this tally is kept, and why.
Besides that, infantry doctrine avoids counting kills because infantry warfare is all about teamwork. If one soldier provides covering fire and another one advances, does it matter which one did the actual killing? As far as anyone is concerned, they both did. Sucess in battle is judged by how well the unit functions and not by the acheivents of individual troops. Rewarding soldiers for personal kills would just encourage competition and one-upmanship, which is unprofessional and often dangerous.
Except snipers do keep track of numbers. However, they have a spotterwho confirms the kill so the one doing the shotting can not say by himself he did it. That’s not to say a lot of people don’t BS though.
(A buddy of mine went to sniper school. You have to see a Pshrink to get in. If you’re not nuts you get rejected.)
Anyway, I am sure snipers (or just plain infantry guys) keep a count. Young men are just like that, no denying it.
Nonetheless, lacking an official cite of some sort, I will continue to contend that no modern military keeps count of the personal ‘score’ of individual kills. It is totally outside of my experience.
During the Vietnam conflict, most American snipers kept track of 2 numbers, confirmed kills and probables.
Despite what is said in the entertaining book “Marine Sniper”, to get a confirmed kill, a sniper had to either be able to physically touch the dead body he had shot, or the spotter had to be able to confirm that someone else had approached and noted the kill via physical confirmation.
In certain circumstances, a sniper could claim a confirmed kill if backed by an eye-witness of higher rank.
This is according to Michael Lanning, who has published a quite exhaustive book on the subject.
Of course Paul is correct. But then boys will be boys.
I was just a kid back during the Vietnam era but my dad had friends that actually fought at Iwo Jima and Okinawa and they told me stories, supposilvly to enhance my respect for the guys that were fighting and be accussed of bad things.
They told me that the guys who hit the beach and saw the action would cut off the ears of the people that they killed and wear them on thier belts to show to thier comrades that they were warriors. :eek: Just like in the movies that they saw showing Indians with scalps and gun fighters with notches on thier belts.
There was also a commen practice of exchanging pictures of dead Japanese soldiers to show what they did. My dad left me several of these and they are very gruesome.
He made it a point to tell me that the American fighting man is evey bit as blood thirsty and barbaric as any warrior that ever existed. That when people are fighting that close together there are no rules and that victory is celebrated. Yes, the boys keep count.