The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War

For most Americans, the evacuation of Saigon in April 1975 marked the end of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War at the price of over 58,000 dead servicemen and women. For a few hundred sailors, airmen, and Marines however, it ended two weeks later, with 41 more men giving their lives during heavy fighting not with North Vietnamese soldiers, but with Cambodian Khmer Rouge. In The Last Battle, author Ray Wetterhahn tells the story of the seizing of the U.S. merchant ship S.S. Mayaguez in international waters off the coast of Cambodia by Khmer Rouge forces, and the U.S. military operation conducted to rescue the 40 civilian crew members. This operation was hailed as a victory for the presidential administration, a victory by the Khmer Rouge, a failure by troops in the action, and a debacle in leadership and command and control by military officers who participated. As the story of this rescue operation unfolds, Wetterhahn describes in startling detail the mindset of President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, operational commanders, pilots and crews, Marines on Koh Tang Island, the crew of the Mayaguez, and the Khmer Rouge soldiers. A retired officer and Vietnam veteran with service in both the Navy and Air Force, he begins the story on the beaches of Koh Tang, where U.S. military members of Joint Task Force - Full Accounting (JTF-FA) are searching for the remains of 18 men killed during the rescue operation over twenty years before. While researching a story on JTF-FA and their recovery efforts, Wetterhahn discovers that three Marines may have been left alive on Koh Tang during the operation. Over the next five years, Wetterhahn's travels take him from the jungles of Koh Tang and Cambodia to the backwoods of West Virginia, where he tracks down the commanders, the troops, the politicians, and even the Khmer Rouge commander on Koh Tang. Shockingly, he confirms the worst fears of the Marine Commanders in 1975: a three-man machine gun team was left alive on Koh Tang, captured, imprisoned, and subsequently executed. With the ending of America's involvement in the Vietnam War falling during the Ford presidential administration, a resounding victory and show of force was needed to prove to Americans that the administration was well equipped to handle any crisis. The Johnson administration failed to act when a similar event happened in 1968 as the North Koreans seized the USS Pueblo, and were criticized by the American media during the eleven months of the crew's captivity, and interrogation, prior to their release. President Ford would not let this happen on his watch. The advanced communications capabilities available in 1975 allowed President Ford, with Secretary Kissinger close at hand, to control nearly the entire operation from the comfort of the Oval Office. Breaking every rule of leadership and command and control, and him being a former Naval Officer, Ford and his staff began directing naval and air forces, and U

We entered Indochina to save a country, and ended by rescuing a ship. -Henry KissingerWith America now the world's unchallenged superpower, it is all too easy to forget the depths to which we had sunk in the 1970s. Ralph Wetterhahn's Last Battle is a healthy reminder of how deep and of some of the reasons why.The book succeeds in three disparate tasks. First, Wetterhahn, a former Air Force pilot, reconstructs the rarely told--and, his research suggests, never completely told before--story of the Mayaguez "rescue", in May 1975, adeptly switching back and forth between the deadly military action and the political games being played in the Ford White House. The stark contrast between the bravery of the men on the ground and the conniving of Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger, in particular, is an ugly reminder of how disconnected the private political concerns of Washington politicians had become from the reality of sending men to die in Southeast Asia. It is hard to avoid the conclusion, and Wetterhahn makes it even harder, that the Mayaguez affair was scene by Gerald Ford as an easy and cheap way to deflect attention from the ignominious Fall of Saigon two weeks earlier and from his disastrous pardon of Richard Nixon.Even more maddening is the level of chaos and incompetence that Wetterhahn depicts at the highest levels of the decision making process. From attacking the wrong island to commencing after the Cambodians had already announced they would release the ship to President Ford actually issuing orders to pilots during the attack, the whole mess is one long example of how not to use American military might. One illustrative moment, which would be funny if it weren't so frightening, sees the White House photographer speak up during a meeting to suggest that the massive retaliation Ford is contemplating might be inappropriate. And the most shocking portions of the book detail the administration's willingness to cover up how many men were lost in the engagement--41, including 23 Air Force servicemen killed in a helicopter crash which was treated as if it had nothing to do with the exercise--and the fact that three Marines, still alive and fighting when last seen, were left behind on Koh Tang Island.Wetterhahn does an excellent job of dissecting the whole morass and drawing out lessons from it. He also makes a convincing case that the failure to openly discuss the problems at the time may well have contributed to future disasters like the botched Iranian hostage rescue in the Carter administration.The final portion of the book is the most poignant though, as Wetterhahn, by now pretty much obsessed with the fate of those three marines, spends years ping-ponging between the US government and Cambodia, trying to determine their fate and recover them or their remains. Here the story takes on both the nature of a mystery tale, the fate of the three at the heart of it, and of a psychological thriller, with Wetterhahn's own need to reach

Colonel Wetterhahn has done a valuable service for the families of all those Americans, civilian and military, who went missing in Cambodia. The nitty-gritty battle details will naturally cause argument among those who had the honor of participating in the battle, but the description of the battle just sets the stage for the final act, the withdrawal without all hands accounted for and the strangely unexplained failure to cordon the isolated island until the fate of those left behind could be established without doubt. That live Marine prisoners could possibly have been allowed to be moved off the island seems shocking. Much of the information in "The Last Battle" will come as a surprise even to those Americans who thought they understood the Mayaguez "incident" and the action on Koh Tang. These same waters off the Cambodian coast claimed American lives several times during the Khmer Rouge era. The newly-published book "The Eagle Mutiny" by Linnett and Loiederman tells the story of mutiny aboard an American munitions ship during 1970 which culminated in the death of one of the mutineers (Clyde McKay) and another US Army deserter (Larry Humphrey) at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Khmer Rouge naval forces under the command of Meah Muth, the son-in-law of Ta Mok, went on to capture four Americans (James William Clark, Lance Macnamara, Michael Scott Deeds, and Christopher Delance) and five other Westerners off the Cambodian coast during 1978 and sent them to be tortured and executed at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. Meah Muth and Ta Mok as well as KR executioner-in-chief Duch (who has admitted killing the Americans at Tuol Sleng and claims to have disposed of the bodies on the personal order of Nuon Chea) have just this week been named as top candidates for an international tribunal on other crimes against humanity. Perhaps then these stories, like the aftermath of most wars, never really come to a full conclusion. What is certain is that Colonel Wetterhahn has once again performed beyond the call of duty. His efforts should serve as an example to all those involved in what the nation proclaims to be the search for "the fullest possible accounting", and hopefully those that disagree with the author's conclusions on the fate of the lost machinegun team will be motivated to travel to Cambodia and investigate for themselves. Action trumps argument.

Mr Watterhahn has put together a fine account of some really terrible events that took place off the coast of Cambodia in 1975. The book, written in a compelling and detailed style, covers the inept handling of the incident, the dedication to duty by the troops involved and the boldness and bravery of the Marines. I have read and followed the accounts about the infamous "Mayaquez Incident" since it happened in May of 1975. This book is the best available, filled with details left out of the newspapers, magazine articles and political babble from the Pentagon. The book follows the course of events from the capture of the ship, details about the crew's reactions, the ill-prepared military and political reactions and finally to the landing of the Marines on Koh Tang Island. The Marines were told that only a handful of Cambodians were on the island where they thought the captive crew were taken. Instead, hundreds of combat experienced Khmer Rouge troops surprised the helicopters as they brought in Marines. The resulting firefight lasted nearly two days of non stop combat, dozens of men were wounded, helicopters were downed, a 15,000 pound bomb was dropped haphazardly on the island by the Air Force, pockets of Marines were surrounded and nearly overrun on several occasions. Pilots risked their crew and aircraft many times bringing in more troops and pulling out casualties. Cambodian participants are interviewed at length in this acount as are American combatants. A government cover up followed the events as the losses were tabulated, 41 men dead, dozens wounded, one dead Marine left behind wrapped in a poncho and three members of a machine gun team left behind during the harried withdrawl. A sad closure to a sad episode of American history. Mr. Wetterhan's book should be manditory reading at West Point and in the White House, and next to Black Hawk Down is some of the finest material about modern combat. As a veteran, I was proud of the job done by the military personnel, and when one corporal was ordered to act as a last rear guard for the evacuation of the Marine force, he turned for volunteers and ten men raised their hands immediately. Bravery and honor. Well researched and rich in detail and with maps to follow the events make this fine reading and a lession Americans should never forget. Thumbs up, Ralph. Job well done.

With great anticipation, I finally had the opportunity to read Ralph Wetterhahn's, The Last Battle. The book is all I hoped it would be, and more. The Last Battle reads like a novel, but the plot of this thriller was written in American blood on a fierce battlefield-and in a lonely killing field in Cambodia. He has unearthed a story that had remained buried in unmarked graves for more than twenty years.Five years ago, Ralph shared an account of his strange return to Southeast Asia. He told of being bumped from a flight to Hanoi by none other than ex-President George Bush. Instead, Ralph had visited Koh Tang Island, the site of America's last horrific battle of the Vietnam War. He had a wild tale of a few days with the Joint Task Force for Full Accounting (JTF-FA) searching to recover remains of eighteen Americans lost on the island in May 1975. I remember his discussions of searches on the beach and in the water; a typhoon that swamped search boats of the JTF-FA; white phosphorous that dried out and ignited after the ramp of a downed HH-53 was pulled from the water; his jungle encounter with Cambodian troops; and his finding that much of the battle could still be traced through overgrown emplacements, discarded shell casings, and trees marked forever during fourteen hours of desperate fighting. And, Ralph told me that his fluency in the Thai language had helped him discover the last battle's most troubling aspect-a sad secret known only to very few for these twenty years. While US Air Force helicopters returned under heavy fire to rescue the ill-fated American force from the darkened beach, three of those eighteen Americans were inadvertently left behind. Even in the mid-1990s, Ralph was convinced that these three US Marines were critical in holding the right flank and keeping the Cambodians off the beach.Now The Last Battle provides the long-overdue full accounting of events. We get the whole story from the moment Cambodian gunboats are spotted bearing down on the S.S. Mayaguez through the deaths of L/Cpl Joseph Nelson Hargrove, PFC Gary Hall, and Pvt. Danny C. Marshall at the hands of their Cambodian captors. Ralph Wetterhahn's extensive journalistic research into previously Top Secret accounts of National Security Council Meetings integrates the story of high-level decision-making in with the tales of valor on the beaches of Koh Tang. Through his several returns trips to Cambodia and his personal interviews with American and Cambodian veterans of the battle, he has extended all previous tellings of the Mayaguez Incident. The Last Battle is a well-integrated and highly comprehensive account. Reading of the valiant attempts to put Marines on the beaches of Koh Tang, one can't help wondering how any of these brave Americans survived the murderous fire. The many original photos provided in The Last Battle are fascinating.As a highly decorated veteran of two combat tours in US Air Force and US Navy fighter aircraft, Ralph is the man to bri