Counterpart

the long version

Amid the chaotic fall of Saigon in April 1975 Capt. Kiem Do, deputy chief of staff for operations in the South Vietnamese Navy, secretly planned and quietly carried out the evacuation of thirty-five ships and some thirty thousand at-risk South Vietnamese. That disciplined retreat is only one of many little-known events of the war recalled in this revealing memoir, the first to be published in English by an officer of the South Vietnamese Navy. Also included are first-person accounts of skirmishes against the Binh Xuyen pirates, life with Diem and Madame Nhu, the foiled communist car-bomb attack on Saigon's naval headquarters during Tet, and the 1974 sea battle between China and South Vietnam. In addition to viewing particular events from a Vietnamese perspective, this book offers an intimate look at the human side of the war, at Vietnamese culture, and at the relationship between the men of the South Vietnamese Navy and their American counterparts - specifically, the naval advisers who crossed paths with Kiem.