When I served as Advisory Team Leader in Trung Lap, located in the heart of our enemy's "Iron Triangle", I had honestly reported five enemy casualties to my boss, Major Kurbow, at District Headquarters, during one of my "hairy" night missions. My truthful report was based on that morning's intensive analysis of our "enemies" prone shelters, which they had quickly dug in a Michelin rubber plantation next to Trung Lap. For a small amount of blood in one shelter, I logged one "WIA" (wounded). For a small bone fragment from a skull, I reported one "KIA", since I reasoned that a bullet which had pierced the brain would have been lethal to the hapless enemy fighter, etc, etc. When I visited my honest and highly moral boss at Cu Chi District later that day, I was told that he had doubled my enemy casualty report, since he thought "I might have missed some of the evidence". That same day, I had to visit the next higher headquarters at Hau Ngia province, where I was shocked to see that Major Kurbow's report had been doubled again! Back in our base at Trung Lap Military Post, my team and I had a good laugh over the continued enlargement of our report, and my XO reasoned that, with a few more headquarters than the ones I had visited, our team would get credit for destroying the entire North Vietnamese Army!
