Finland made the USSR pay dearly for it's victory, but it was a victory for the Soviets. I'm not certain exactly what Comrade Stalin was planning for Finland. I believe he was willing to take only as much of Finland as he considered strategically important, at minimal cost . His foreign minister, Molotov, had negotiations with the Finns in October 1940. The main topic of the meetings was a "re-alignment" of the southern border of Finland in order to move the border further north from Leningrad, and to totally control Lake Ladoga. Finland was to be compensated with some territory in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Karelia (mostly wasteland). My guess is that the Finns weren't buying into the agreement because the USSR had already coerced Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia into occupation status. Of course those three Baltic republics were in a much more strategic location than Finland; they were on the route from German East Prussia to Leningrad.
A country can be defeated yet still retain most of it's territory. Keep in mind Finland suffered the same fate as Romania later did in June 1940. The Soviets coerced Romania to cede the provinces of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to the USSR. Note in both cases the USSR took only territory in Romania and Finland to improve their defensive stance versus Germany. One very important thing to remember is that ALL of the land in the Baltic region seized by the USSR had been approved by Hitler in August 1939. Hitler was forced to allow Soviet hegemony in the Baltic area as the price of the Nonaggression Pact of 1939 between Germany and the USSR. The USSR won the Winter War, but at too high a price for the amount of territory gained. IMHO, the Soviets were the winners in another way. The many fiascos the Soviets suffered in the Winter War in December and January of 1939-40 were a wakeup call for the Red Army. The harsh lessons learned in the Winter of 1939-40 saved the Red Army a lot of grief in the winter of 1941-42 during the Battle for Moscow. I wonder why Hitler didn't realize that his army would suffer the same fate in the Russian winter unless properly equipped? We know he was watching the Soviet military incompetence in Finland, and it affected his planning for the invasion of the USSR.

Jackbull, I have to agree with your point about the VC dragging off their dead and wounded during American offensive operations in order to deny us intel and accurate body count numbers. Bolstering morale was probably another factor, although I doubt dragging a badly wounded VC down into a dank tunnel system to receive second rate care at best did much for the survivability of the wounded. I know the Vietnamese don't like to talk about the percentage of WIAs that became DOWs. I wonder what the NVA medevac priority was during their large scale offensives in 1972 and 1975. I wonder if they even had a medevac plan.

7GREEN, what do you think of the M60? It seems to me that Vietnam era soldiers consider it to be a much better weapon than the soldiers of the 1980s and 1990s did. I think by the time the 1980s, many of the M60s were pretty shopworn. It seemed to me that chipped locking lugs on the bolts and well worn parts were very common.