Friday, March 24, 2017

"Escape from Saigon" and a mini-memoir of April 1975

Michael Morris and Dick Pirozzolo, Escape from Saigon (New York: Skyhouse Publishing, 2017), 250 pages and a few photos.

I have fond memories of April 1975.  My senior year in high school was winding down.  The azaleas were beautiful early in the month, and I was in love with a woman with whom I felt I would spend the rest of my life (it didn't happen, but that's another story).  We attended Azalea Festival's functions. For her birthday, which was on the 13th, I gave her an opal necklace.  We made plans for the prom.  Working at Wilson's Supermarket, I had some cash in my wallet, as well as a recently issued draft card.  Thankfully, they hadn't been drafting in a couple of years, but the card was a reminder of the war.  While life held so much promise, there was a question that April of what was happening in Southeast Asia as the governments in South Vietnam and Cambodia were collapsing.  In this era before news became ubiquitous, I read the daily newspaper, watched the evening news and dug into the weeklies in the library: Newsweek, Time, and U.S. and World News Reports.  My idyllic life as a high school senior had the potential to be upended.  Among male friends, we discussed what we'd do if America decided to go back in to assist the South Vietnamese.  We watched as one city after another fell and as people streamed out of Vietnam.  I remember the horror when a plane full of orphans crashed.  As a nation we'd been out of Vietnam just two years.  A part of me felt we had an obligation and should do something to assure the safety of our friends in Vietnam.  Yet, the idea of going to war wasn't something I relished and Canada was always a possibility.
Escape from Saigon provides snapshots of the chaos occurring in the final month of the war.  Each day of the month, there is a new story told through a group of individuals: war correspondents, a former soldier going back to save the family of his Vietnamese wife, diplomats struggling to do what needed to be done, an ambassador who had checked out from reality, a Vietnamese pilot who deflects and another who pilots a helicopter filled with family to safety, and United States Marines assigned to the embassy.  Some of the stories were based on events that I recalled happening.  This book captures the horror and some of the heroic events that occurred that month.
I enjoyed this book. It was an easy and quick read.  My only complaint was that on at least one occasion, I felt the text jump out of the present (April 1975) and into the future to inform us what transpired.  Although as a reader one knows what happens (South Vietnam falls), keeping the suspense in the present is important as no one was really sure when it would occur and what would happen as the country spun out of control.
This novel was written by two different authors.  The two had worked together on non-fiction projects beforehand, but this is their first attempt at writing fiction together.  Despite having two authors, the story reads seamlessly.  Both authors were Vietnam vets.  Morris was in the infantry while Pirozzolo served in the Air Force assisting in the daily briefings for the press corps (which became known as the "5 O'Clock Follies").  
I picked up a copy of the book at a local reading Michael held in a club.  But I met him a week earlier, at a men's luncheon.  We were sitting at a large round table (that probably held 10 seats) and I was talking to the guy next to me about an email we'd both received inviting us to this book reading.  From what I read in the email, I was interested in the book, but being unfamiliar with the author, I wanted to make sure it was going to be an enjoyable read.  I asked the guy if he'd read and if the book was any good.  Another guy sitting at the table piped in and said, "Why don't you just ask the author?" He then introduced Michael, who was sitting across the table from me.  I am sure I was red-faced as I introduced myself.  I'm glad to report that I did find the book a good read.  

19 comments:

  1. Lol, your last paragraph sounds like something I would do.

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  2. Ha! I probably wouldn't ask the author if his book was a good read. He's probably biased.

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  3. My husband is a Vietnam vet and I wonder if he'd enjoy this. While we watch plenty of war movies and he's read his share of military biographies, rarely do they come from this era.

    I was a 'Bicentennial' graduate, so we're contemporaries. :)

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  4. Sounds like a compelling book to read. Your last paragraph made me laugh. Ooops. Haha!

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  5. That's funny sitting across from the author and not knowing it. I was 5 years old in 1975 and my uncle was in Vietnam. He'd come home every year and tell us about it.

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  6. "Why don't you just ask the author?" I love that. I'm going to share a similar story one of these days. Thanks for reminding me of it. And what happened to that lovely girl you took to Azalea Festival? I know there's another story there.

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  7. Oh my. Good thing for both of you that you liked the book. Sounds like an interesting read. I wish my high school years had spent more time on twentieth century topics like Vietnam instead of rehashing the Civil War every year.

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  8. I like the way you describe things, you express yourself very well. This does sound like a good read. Thank you so much for sharing.

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  9. Glad you found this to be a good read! Sounds interesting for sure. I can imagine the horror of realizing the author was sitting across from you- but it sounds like it went well after that.

    I also liked hearing about your memories from spring 1975. :)
    ~Jess

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  10. I have fond memories of that year too. What a decade the 70s were.😂

    What an amazing coincidence to meet the author that way. It was good you enjoyed his book.

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  11. Sounds fascinating - a bit sobering, too. There were so many Vietnam stories popping up in the '80s. You don't see them as much these days.

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  12. You make an interesting point about books being written about events that the reader knows the outcome of. I agree that it's important to keep the reader in suspense, because for some reason, even though sometimes I know the outcome of an event I'm reading about, subconsciously I'm still waiting for the book to reveal it to me.

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  13. I've read a couple of nonfiction works on the Vietnam war era, and a number of novels, some more accurate than others. I still don't know a lot about that world, though, and since I wasn't eligible for the draft until after the war was essentially over I didn't really pay that much attention as a teenager. I should have look at this book. It might be what I need to get some more perspective.

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  14. I have been contemplating travelling to today's Vietnam, but cannot shake the images from "yester years" Vietnam that I saw in the news from my childhood days, friend Sage ... Love, cat

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    1. Go, it is an incredible place. I wrote about my time there in another blog. Maybe I should rewrite those stories and post them here.

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  15. I just finished reading The Sacred Willow about four generations of a Vietnamese family during the wars that led up to and through the Vietnam war to modern times. Although familiar with many events, it brought everything into vivid detail.

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    1. Sounds interesting and a little like Pearl Buck's, "The LIving Reed" which is about three generations in Korea, leading up to the Korean War.

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  16. I've read a bunch of books relating to the VN war, but not this one. I think I'll check it out. Thanks for the review!

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  17. Oh goodness!!!
    LOL at your last paragraph ...

    All the best Jan

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