First and foremost, it’s a totally harebrained idea.
You’re lying in the open, without protection and cover, and let an enemy patrol pass by. Then you suddenly come alive, grab your gun and kill them all. What could possibly go wrong?
Even in the most savage and brutal war zones, there isn’t a dead enemy soldier lying around every fifteen meters. This means that you will arouse curiosity, a lot!
You will become a magnet for every enemy patrol. Depending on your enemy, they will either search you, poke you a bit with their bayonets, or even put a bullet in your head to make sure you really are what you pretend to be (i.e. dead).
A British soldier posing with a dead Taliban in Afghanistan. (Photo: The Herald)
Playing dead is also a war crime. It constitutes “perfidy” and is expressly banned under the Geneva Conventions (“The feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness”).
This might not keep you away from doing it, especially if you’re fighting in a conflict where nobody cares about such things, but it might bite you in the a** later, after the war.
Last but not least, and this is the main reason why I would never do such a thing, your chances to successfully pull this off are very low. It’s almost suicidal.
If you like, you can say that it requires a lot of balls but this depends on your definition of bravery, boldness, and recklessness. It certainly isn’t a thing a coward would do.