Body count 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 . Military use . Body count figures have a long history in military planning and propaganda . In ancient battles , the penises ( and sometimes the scrotums as well ) of killed and dying enemies were collected from the field to count the dead . 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 . 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 US Army used body counts to show that the US was winning the war . The Army ' s theory was that eventually , the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army would lose after the attrition warfare . Ho Chi Minh said , in reference to the French , " You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours . But even at those odds , you will lose and we will win . " Some analysis of war casualties indicated that the US and its allies inflicted roughly a three - to - two ratio of communist combat deaths against allied deaths . Eventually , the US signed the Paris Peace Accords and pulled out . North Vietnam claimed that 1 . 1 million communist troops were killed during the war , while 58 , 220 Americans and at least 171 , 331 South Vietnamese combatants died in the conflict . The official US Department of Defense figure was 950 , 765 communist forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974 . Defense Department officials believed that these body count figures need to be deflated by 30 percent . In addition , Guenter Lewy assumes that one - third of the reported " enemy " killed may have been civilians , concluding that the actual number of deaths of communist military forces was probably closer to 444 , 000 . 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 fatalitites since January 2004 but only those killed by insurgents and not those killed by the US forces . Movies . In censorship , " Body count " has been used as a criterion to judge the ' shock value ' of a movie , and hence its suitability for younger viewers . It is usually calculated by the number of deaths or bodies shown on - screen . This has led some directors to imply deaths instead of showing them , for example showing a group of unarmed people facing a villain , then cutting to the villain firing a gun and grinning . The victims ' bodies are never shown , but the viewer will understand that they were killed .