Publications
ESCAPE WITH HONOR
My Last Hours in Vietnam
by Francis Terry McNamara,
with Adrian Hill
(Washington & London: Brassey's, 1997, 1999)
224 pp, 20 photographs, map, appendix, index
cloth $22.95 (members' price $19)
paperback $$16.95 (members' price $14)
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from Publishers Weekly, August 18, 1997: "The work of a compassionate, literate man . . . this is an inside view of the final days of the American presence in Vietnam. More importantly, it is an informative, uplifting inside view of how people cope in times of chaos." |
During a 37-year Foreign Service career, Terry McNamara
had three postings in Vietnam—as provincial adviser with the CORDS program,
first principal officer in Danang, and consul general in Can Tho. ESCAPE WITH
HONOR tells the true story of then-Consul General McNamara's harrowing
evacuation from Can Tho down the Mekong River by boat, carrying over 300 U.S.
and Foreign Service National staff and family members, on April 29-30, 1975.
McNamara also served in seven African posts, was ambassador in Gabon and São Tomé y Principe and in Cape Verde, and is the author of France in Black Africa. Earlier, he served in the U.S. Navy's Submarine Service. Adrian Hill, a British writer and former diplomat, also saw service in Vietnam.
Other Readers' Reviews
- David Butler, author of The Fall of Saigon:
"An event as apocalyptic as the collapse of an entire society - which is what happened to all anticommunist elements in South Vietnam in the spring of 1975 - brings out the essential character of everyone caught up in the drama. As Escape with Honor vividly demonstrates, Terry McNamara's essential character mixes compassion with fierce loyalty and an almost superhuman resourcefulness. What he did to get his Vietnamese colleagues out of the Mekong Delta in the chaotic closing weeks of the war in Vietnam is a shining example of heroic grace under pressure."
- The Washington Times (December 20, 1997):
"In April 1975 McNamara . . . was the highest-ranking American in the southernmost of South Vietnam's four administrative regions. When the regime abruptly collapsed, it fell to him to get his people - American and Vietnamese - out of the country in a hurry. . . . So this hands-on diplomat organized the escape of 'McNamara's Navy,' several hundred people crammed aboard two LCM landing craft. And this is the subject of Escape with Honor, a wonderfully readable and moving memoir about a very bad moment in American history."
- Robert H. Miller (Foreign Service Journal, January 1998):
"McNamara's account captures the sights and smells of the Mekong Delta amid the tensions of war. He skillfully weaves in background events leading up to the evacuation: his difficulties in convincing the U.S. authorities in Saigon to allow him to evacuate his staff by water; the collapse of the Thieu government's resistance to North Vietnamese forces in the areas north of Saigon; and the heart-rending and chaotic evacuations of other U.S. consulates, USAID missions, and civilian operations in Hue, Danang, and Nha Trang. . . .. Escape with Honor should be appreciated for what it is: a highly personal account of one brief moment in history, a thrilling story about the Foreign Service that deserves to be read."
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