In recording the episode, however, regimental headquarters decides that awkwardness would be avoided if it were stated that arms had been found in the shot-up truck. So the final communiqué reads: “Yesterday at … the occupants of a truck machine-gunned passers-by, miraculously only wounding one."

XREF: Connects to broader military psychology literature on moral injury and desensitization in counterinsurgency, and to Vietnam-era discussions of 'mere gook rule.'

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 522