A Knavish Piece of Work"A Knavish Piece of Work" is a novelization of the infamous Mayaguez Incident of May 15, 1975 wherein the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia captured a U.S.-registered container ship en route to Sattahip, Thailand on a routine resupply mission. Then president Gerald Ford called for an immediate rescue of the crew, believed to be held on Koh Tang, a minute island in the Gulf of Siam. A last-minute mission was thrown together in which a force of Marines would be airlifted from U Tapao, Thailand to Koh Tang by Air Force CH-53s and HH-53s. The mission was a disaster with eighteen men killed in the assault and only three of the original fifteen helicopters flyable at the end of the day. Among the dead was the author's friend, Richard Van de Geer, the last name on the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall. Everything from inexperience to poor intelligence was blamed for the fiasco. And the captive crew? They were released by the Cambodians early in the morning of 15 May, not from Koh Tang, but from Rong Sam Lem, another island twenty-two miles away! Moreover, Ford knew the crew was not on Koh Tang and he knew it some twenty hours before the assault began. Why would a president go through with an assault on an island that held no captives?
Ralph Wetterhahn As commanding and revelatory as the recent best-sellers Flags of Our Fathers and Black Hawk Down, this new volume on the Vietnam War ranges from an obscure Cambodian island in Southeast Asia to the Oval Office of the White House as it chronicles one of the most overlooked incidents and heartbreaking episodes in America's costliest foreign conflict. On May 12, 1975, barely two weeks after U.S. helicopters lifted off the roof of the American embassy in Saigon, the S.S. Mayaguez was seized by Cambodian forces. Four days later, President Gerald Ford ordered a raid to free the ship, even though American diplomacy had already successfully negotiated its release. The U.S. Marine strike force took flight. The ensuing battle, the last of the war, took fourteen hours and the lives of forty-one Americans, including three soldiers who were unwittingly left behind when the U.S. choppers flew off. Vietnam veteran Ralph Wetterhahn has spent more than five years investigating what happened that day in the Cambodian jungle: how the abandonment of the three men who guarded the flank of the vulnerable Marine position occurred; why they were left to their tragic fate; and how -- from unprecedented interviews with the Khmer Rouge captors -- they met their grisly deaths. His spellbinding account redeems to our national memory these three entirely forgotten young Marines and their brave deeds under fire
Roy Rowan
Roy Rowan sailed aboard the Mayaguez after her recovery and conducted extensive (and in many cases exclusive) interviews with the captain and crew, and later with the President in the White House.
Here, in a revealing and perhaps historic narrative, Roy Rowan details the diplomatic effort to obtain the release and tells why the Marines, the Air Force, and the Navy were ordered to attack.
