The Four Days of Mayaguez

"The Four Days of Mayaguez" provides a vivid account of the seizure of the ship and crew off the Cambodian coast in May 1975, as told from the perspective of the hostages. Other accounts of the incident generally focus on the well-intentioned but misinformed US military action on Tang Island, the confusion surrounding the hectic night-time withdrawal under fire, and the fates of those three young enlisted Marines left behind alive on the island to be killed days later while the US administration was basking in its own deceptive public relations spin on its "victorious release of the hostages". Excellent reading which will be especially meaningful to those who participated in the rescue, to the families of those lost in the incident, and to all those who lost loved ones in past wars. Colonel Ralph Wetterhahn's newly-released "The Last Battle" reveals the terror and horror of the true end of the Mayaguez "incident". Readers will likely also want to study Richard Linnett's "The Eagle Mutiny", which deals with the bizarre case of the March 1970 mutiny aboard the Columbia Eagle in the same waters off the Cambodian coast. The former Khmer Rouge naval forces commander involved in both the seizure of the Mayaguez in 1975 and the capture of four other Americans sailing the coast of Cambodia in 1978 has been named recently as a candidate for a possible international tribunal related to other crimes against humanity not related to the deaths of the seven Americans.

I was involved in this conflict as a stretcher bearer on the Henry B. Wilson DDG 7. I was aware of most of the activities our ship was involved in. I was not fully aware of why we were there or the reasoning behind sending us there in the first place. Mr Rowan enlightened me somewhat on that issue. I was aware of the casualties as I helped to bring them on board, those Marines that we pulled from the water. I was hoping that Mr Rowan's book would enlighten me as to why we continued to bomb and straff that island all night long into the next day? Some of us on the Wilson surmised it was because of the loss of saigon and the vietnam war, that we needed some kind of victory no matter how small the conflict, and with the Mayaguez we got it. What will forever stay with me is the memory of those Marines that were wounded and those killed in action. Heroes, each and every one that took part in that rescue.