Return to Saigon

He ejects from his burning Navy jet and lands on a karst ridge near Hanoi. What follows in this meticulously researched history is a memoir of war. It is an account of one of the most implausible and heroic rescues of the air-war--and the aftermath. And the events immediately following his rescue carry the author to a secret base in Laos, then to a makeshift hospital in Saigon. The larger story, however, is of the author’s complex relationship with Vietnam. It begins in Saigon, where he completes high school and comes to love the Vietnamese people. When he departs for college, he believes he’s done with the country. But when he leaves college life behind and enlists in the Navy, a series of improbable events land him in Navy flight school. As a pilot, it’s a direct line to combat and an unexpected return to a Saigon hospital--one with a surprising connection to his past. The author experienced some of the fiercest air combat of the war. His air wing repeatedly hit the toughest targets in North Vietnam and suffered the highest loss rate--39 of its 72 aircraft went down. Many others suffered battle damage. The Jolly Green helicopter pilot who flew from the secret base in Laos to rescue the author earned the rarely awarded Air Force Cross and his three crew-members all were awarded Silver Stars. Following his hospitalization and rehabilitation, the writer volunteered for a third combat deployment, where he completed 137 combat missions. Three decades later, the war behind him, he returns to Saigon, then he travels north to Hanoi to make his way into the remote countryside where he and his flight leader were shot down. A local guide, a woman who remembers the day the two airplanes were blown from the sky, leads him up the steep karst ridge and then deep into a cavern. During the trek he learns her brother was one of the gunners. Later that day, seated at a table in her thatched home, he begins to find reconciliation.