Numbers

In a few weeks, according to the American estimate, the number of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong dead by actual body count since Jan. 1, 1961, will pass 600,000 men and women. There have long been honest doubts about the accuracy of the body counts, and despite all the genuine efforts of the U.S. military to verify tolls and improve the accounting techniques, the doubts are not likely to vanish. The odd thing is that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong may have suffered even more heavily than the Allied tallies indicate. American figures do not include the thousands of dead enemy troops borne off the fields by their comrades, or the thousands more wounded who have later died of their wounds.

Counting their battle dead, their captured, victims of fatal disease and the 140,400 who have deserted to the Saigon cause, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces have probably been drained of about 1,640,400 men during the war. Applying such a loss to the U.S. population base (there are 21 million people in North Viet Nam, plus over 100,000 Viet Cong, v. 200 million in the U.S.), that would be the equivalent of about 15,500,000 Americans lost. And this does not even count the Vietnamese who have died in the U.S. bombings of the North. Proportionately, the North Vietnamese have taken among the heaviest casualties in the history of warfare.

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