Newspaper interview request

[Dave Wilton]

> > body count
>
> I have supplied the OED with a citation from H. Beam Piper's
> science fiction novel "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen", beginning
> of chapter 18 (pagination varies in different editions).
> The book was published in 1965 but the text had been written
> a year or two earlier, since Piper died in 1964.
> Hence it is safe to say that the term was in existence before
> it was used in the Vietnam War.

I don't have an earlier citation, but I'm not sure it's "safe to say" that.
While major US troop deployments to Vietnam did not occur until 1965, US
forces were fighting there beginning in the late-1950s. I'll bet that
digging through military planning and policy documents would turn up earlier
uses in a Vietnam context.