True faith and allegiance
Subtitle: an American paratrooper and the 1972 battle for An Loc
By: Mike McDermott
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Tuscaloosa
Language: eng
Number of pages: 187
ISBN-13: 9780817317553; 9780817385835
Subjects: Vietnam War, 1961-1975; United States; American Personal narratives; An Loc, Battle of, An Lộc, Vietnam, 1972; United States. Army; Parachute troops; Biography
Description: True Faith and Allegiance: An American Paratrooper and the 1972 Battle for An Loc is an intimate and compelling account of brutal infantry warfare and is also a critique of the mishandling of America's departure from Indochina. An unintended consequence of Washington's stampede to get out of Indochina was an upsurge in combat on a scale not seen before in Vietnam, peaking with the Easter Offensive of 1972. The battle for An Loc, a key component in the North Vietnamese attempt to overwhelm the South, swept Mike McDermott, then the senior advisor to an elite South Vietnamese paratrooper battalion, into some of the most horrific close-quarters fighting of the war. His in-the-trenches account is augmented by detailed descriptions of a user's perspective on the parachute resupply, tactical air power, and B-52 strikes that allowed the An Loc garrison to survive. True Faith and Allegiance is a riveting recounting of the prism through which a Vietnam veteran views the war as he continues to live with the aftereffects of life-altering experiences in the service of his country.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.