Honorable Exit: How a Few Brave Americans Risked All to Save Our Vietnamese Allies at the End of the War

Clarke (Last Campaign) does a fine job in this latest reconstruction of the infamous, chaotic final days of the Republic of (South) Vietnam at the end of April 1975, specifically “the greatest evacuation under wartime conditions since Dunkirk and the largest humanitarian operation in American history.” Clarke goes into detail about the failed White House decision making in the months leading up to what is known in the U.S. as “the fall of Saigon,” but he mostly focuses on what he calls “American Schindlers,” a group of CIA and military men, U.S. embassy employees, Foreign Service officers, and civilians (including airline employees and NGO officials) who worked diligently and often courageously to evacuate some 130,000 South Vietnamese military and government workers and their families, sometimes against great odds. Clarke provides compelling details, recounting, for example, how the consul general of Can Tho, Terry McNamara, refused to follow conventional wisdom and abandon Vietnamese staff while evacuating American personnel by helicopter. Instead he led a much larger group of both Vietnamese and Americans to safety via a risky boat journey down the Mekong River. Clarke calls out several participants for mishandling the evacuation, including secretary of state Henry Kissinger and especially U.S. ambassador Graham Martin. Filled with new information and riveting recreations of daring rescues, this book adds significantly to the history of a notable moment in U.S. military history. Photos. [em](Apr.) [/em]