Frank discussion on the Question;

In war, do soldiers ever pose for pictures with the corpses of the enemies they killed?

Although I saw a number of these pictures, I never witnessed anybody doing it. In the units I served, such behavior wouldn’t have been tolerated.

The only exemption I remember was when some of our guys in Bosnia posed for a group photo that included parts of a human skeleton. Still, I’m not sure that these bones were from an enemy soldier. It might have been a farmer.

A US soldier posing with the dead body of an Iraqi civilian. There were several cases where pictures like this one went public. (Photo: The Guardian)

The souvenir pictures with the dead ones are usually not shown around a lot. If they go public, it often causes a scandal.

Nevertheless, I think they are quite common, especially among soldiers who didn’t see a lot of action. How do you want to convince your older brother at home that you really have been through the worst sh*t, if you haven’t? A picture of you with a dead body might do the trick.

On the other hand, seasoned combat soldiers don’t waste their time with these kinds of idiocies. They don’t have to prove anything to anyone.