Wars are littered with figures: troops employed, dead and wounded, planes shot down, trucks shot up. But the most important figures, and often the most tragic, are not limited to the forces of combat. In South Viet Nam, no other statistic speaks with more forlorn eloquence than this: out of every eight civilians, one is now a refugee.
Vietnamese do not leave their homes easily. Outside the major cities, which have acquired both the cosmopolitan air and armed defense of the enlightened West, their huts are shrines to their ancestors, their land a heritage to be revered. Yet 1.8 million of South...
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