It struck him, notably, that the obituaries in the South Vietnamese press showed an abnormally high death rate among village chiefs (crucial figures in Vietnam, as the link between the government and 90 percent of the population). Digging further, he determined that 452 village officials had died within a year, or more than one per day. He then made two maps, one showing where they had perished and another indicating the location of guerrilla activity in the same time period.
