In the hamlets and villages of Vietnam, America waged a little-known war to serve and build in the midst of strife that destroyed and killed. The pacification program, "for the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people, represented an attempt to settle the conflict by bolstering support for the South Vietnam government and encouraging grass-roots opposition to the Viet Cong and the North. In that program, Col. Edward Metzner spent eight years as an advisor to district and provincial chiefs; his story is the story of the better side of Americans' involvement in Southeast Asia.
"More Than...

When helicopters plucked the last Americans off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in 1975, countless Vietnamese who had worked with or for the Americans remained behind. Many of these were soon arrested and sent to "reeducation" camps where they faced forced labor, indoctrination sessions, and privation. Others suffered through harrowing flights from their homes seeking safe haven across treacherous seas. The stories of three of these Vietnamese who survived and eventually found their way to America are told here in stark and moving detail.

For a decade before the fall of Saigon,...