To get us back on, or even "toward", the topic, I suspect all nations, in times of war, exaggerate and "stretch" when it comes to writing up awards recommendations. Anyone who writes up someone else for an award obviously wants to see them get that award. And, as anyone over the age of six knows, not everyone who deserves awards gets them, and not all who get them deserve them; whining aside, this is just the way the system works, always has, always will. Most awards recommendations are intended for internal, contemporaneous, bureaucratic circulation only and were not intended to be "propaganda" (a slippery value-laden term of undetermined meaning). This is why it is so difficult for a researcher to access recommendations; they were never intended to be public documents. In extraordinary cases of heroism, where the individual was later marked (by the government) to be put forward to the public, through the media, as a model for emulation, the public relations guys get to work their "special magic" on the recommendation to dress it up for public consumption. And this may entail adding a final zero onto the body count or exggerating in other ways as the internal recommendation becomes a press release. None of this should detract from the real heroism that often lies behind these accounts, but when the deeds of a hero are repackaged to motovate the public during time of war, some "marketing spin" always takes place. For recent examples, glance at the Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross recommendations coming out of Iraq.