THE LAST BATTLE

Retired Air Force pilot and military historian Wetterhahn offers the fullest account yet of the Mayaguez incident, that series of events often symbolically thought of as the last battle of the Vietnam War.

On May 12, 1975, a little more than two years after the last US ground forces left Vietnam, Khmer Rouge, assigned to the islands south of Cambodia, seized the Mayaguez, a US merchant ship bound for Thailand. The crew of 40 were taken to the mainland, but not before the radio operator got off his SOS. In a few hours, situation reports began to reach the National Security Council, ably portrayed by Wetterhahn from declassified minutes of the meetings between President Ford, Secretary of State Kissinger, and Defense Secretary Schlesinger, among others. Ford was determined to punish the Cambodians and to effect a dramatic rescue, and insisted on controlling the combat situation from the Oval Office, resulting in a confused battle plan that sent a company of Marines into an assault on a stoutly-defended island where the captives were erroneously thought to be. After 41 Marines and Air Force personnel died in ground combat or helicopter crashes, the Cambodians released the merchant seaman. In the meantime, the Navy had captured the Mayaguez without resistance. Most heartbreaking of all, the Marines left behind three men, who were captured, bludgeoned to death, and buried in shallow graves. They were, in a way, the last Americans to die in the Vietnam War, and their heroism has yet to be acknowledged.

A sharp, exciting account, sure to appeal to military history buffs but also instructive for those who think that stories of lost POWs and MIAs are crackpot legends for zealots. The truth, which Wetterhahn patiently and evenhandedly pursues, hurts.