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Nonfiction Lucky doc RACING BACK TO VIETNAM   By John Pendergrass 256 pp. Hatherleigh Press Reviewed By William C. Crawford This is a readable memoir brought forth on the 50th anniversary of the US withdrawal. There has been a plethora of recent writing in many genres focusing on the ever-controversial conflict. Due to the recent release of the acclaimed Ken Burns documentary, the nation’s attention has been painfully refocused to ponder the conundrums of this ill-fated example of American exceptionalism. The author’s wartime experience is unique in that he served as both a flight surgeon and a volunteer rear seat rider for 54 combat missions with an F-4 fighter squadron based in Da Nang. He had a cushy rear-echelon job that he left intermittently to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail in nearby Laos and North Vietnam. Pendergrass offers a straightforward account of both his medical life and his air-combat interludes, as well as the tightly knit camaraderie of a wartime fighter squadron. Th...

Nonfiction Whiskey-voiced legend ... DICKEY CHAPELLE UNDER FIRE: Photographs by the First American Female War Correspondent Killed in Action 136 pp. Wisconsin Historical Society Press By John Garofolo Reviewed by William C. Crawford Dickey Chapelle was a woman and an intrepid, pioneer combat photographer. In many important ways she was like the Marines that she often followed into battle. She had a nose for the images of war, but her work also captured the human side. She died in 1965 before Vietnam became a lost cause for American forces. A Marine patrol she joined hit a booby trap south of Chu Lai. Flying shrapnel severed her carotid artery. Legendary combat photographer Henri Huet caught a poignant image of a chaplain administering last rites to Chapelle on the battlefield. Huet and other well known photographers would themselves later perish in a helicopter shot down over Laos in the waning days of the War. Dickey proved herself as a war correspondent during the later years of Worl...

Fiction Allies to the bitter end LAST OF THE ANNAMESE 336 pp. Naval Institute Press By Tom Glenn Reviewed by William C. Crawford This enthralling read is an autobiographical novel about the fall of Vietnam to the Communists in 1975. Tom Glenn lived much of the backstory of the ignominious American pullout from the War. His vantage point was as a US intelligence operative. He skillfully overlays a gripping love triangle onto a vivid account of the final days of the American presence in Saigon. The book provides understated commentary on the bankrupt US foreign policy which first thrust our military forces into Southeast Asia. Then we abandoned thousands of our most loyal indigenous supporters. Annamese is a multifaceted, little-known term in the West having various connotations throughout Vietnam’s poignant history. It is alternately an historical name for the country; a French provincial designation; and in this work, a nod to the mythical sky goddess who was venerated by one prominent...

NONFICTION Slighted heroes Honor before Glory By Scott McGaugh 304 pp. Da Capo Reviewed by William C. Crawford American exceptionalism often plays out through our sordid treatment of our most loyal but vulnerable citizens. The US under attack often creates opportunity for our wrongly maligned patriots to erase, without doubt, any question as to their commitment to America. The imprisonment of solid Japanese-American citizens during World War II is now a well-known if seamy chapter in our history. I recently visited the museum at the windswept former internment camp in California known as Manzanar. One of the most telling if ironic features on exhibit there were the faded photos of young Japanese-American GIs in uniform returning to Manzanar to visit their captive parents. The heroic stories of Nisei soldiers in the European theater and Burma are only recently an emerging theme in the annals of World War II history. Honor before Glory brings long overdue light to the little known heroi...