4 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
'E by the Viet Cong, I think we killed only 20. However,
we lost 50 -f our men killed and 35 wounded rnd 16
J
captured. I personally saw and helped carry out about
25 of our own dead-but tney report we lost about 12.
But these felse paper reports satisfy Washington. The
emphabis is not on what we are accomplishing and what 2:
actual progress is being made. Rather if you put down
on paper that progress is being made it is sufficient.
They are living in a dream world, but I'm afraid they
are fooling only themselves---and the American public:
both will suffer in the long run.
Finally, the role of the body counts in the My Lai incident as described
in Robeýrt J. Lifton, Home From the War (New York: Touchstone Books,
1973) pp. 60-61, deserves consideration, and is therefore quoted at
some length:
v And there is a way of measuring: one counts, scores
points complete with ene's fellow soldiers, or collectively
with another unit, for the highest score. One
kills "for the rec~rd." Indeed, there is now consi-
Jerable evidence confirming earlier suspicions that My
Lai was largely a product of the numerical (body count)
ambitions of high-level officers. That "record" could
determine their promotions and profoundly affect their
future careers. For instance, Colonel Oran K. Henderson,
a non-West Pointer who had p-"viously suffered a number of
frustrations in his efforts to become a general, "followed
the usual commander's practice cf emphasizing bndy counts;"
as did the Task Force Commander, Colonel Frank A. Barker,
an unusually aggressive and ambitious officer, whose
units were known for their high body counts and their
capacity to "g-,r, down a lot of people." 41/ The hunger
for a high body count on the part of thesj two officers,
and of course on the part of their superiors a; well,
was passed along to Medina at the earlier briefing,
and so on down the line--everyone, f,om President of
the United States on down to the lowliest GI caught up
in this malignant nix of pressure and need.
There wes a troublesome disparity between body count and
the number of captured enemy weapons, a disparity which,
if honestly evaluated, would have made it clear that
bodies counted were mainly those cf civilians. Instead,
Colonel Henderson, during his briefing, attributed the
* ~disparity to GIs having been irtsufficientiy aggressive
in the past in "closing with the enemy," thereby permitting
women and children in the area to pick up the
weapons before tLe GIs "arrived to where they had kitled
L1• ~4-63