"Fear death? Hell, no. I've been through some of the worst crap in the world. Jesus, when you got something that people don't talk about... One of the things they were interested in over there was a body count. If you didn't have enough bodies, they'd go around,taking a machete, chopping off body parts, putting them in different bags so you have more bodies. Enemy bodies. Throw a couple arms in this one, a leg in this one."
From an interview with Victor Israel Marquez
Page 112 of
Studs Terkel's
Will the Circle be Unbroken? Reflections on Death and Dignity.
Now, I've read a few good books on Vietnam- Dispatches by Michael Herr, Nam by Mark Baker, Journal of Plague Year by John Parrish and A Rumour of War by Philip Caputo among them, but this was the first time I'd heard that level of gaming the system. In one of the ones above (Baker? Herr?) there's a story of a grunt who had a necklace of Vietnamese ears. He was ordered to sew them back on the bodies, and in an act of rebellion (Good Soldier Schweik) he did so, but backwards. But the Marquez quote- urgh.
The obvious historical parallel is with King Leopold and his bounty for hands of the people of the Congo. Heart of Darkness meets Iron Cage of Rationality.
And the best documentary I saw about the grunt's experience of the war was Winter Soldier. Best film? Full Metal Jacket, which is half Dispatches, half "The Short-Timers."
The body count is a classic "not everything that can be measured matters; not everything that matters can be measured" dilemma. Asides from the morality of killing millions of people of course.
An historical note- Alain Enthoven, an early exponent/proponent of the body count, ended up as the godfather of the NHS's 90s to naughties "market" reforms.
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