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Tell Somebody


Aug 21, 2012

In May of 1975, President Gerald Ford's approval ratings bumped up 11 points a few days after he launched what has been called the last battle of the Vietnam War - sending Marines to rescue the crew of a US civilian container ship that had been seized by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge.  Ford announced the safe return of the container crew, but didn't mention the 41 Marines and Air Force personnel who were killed in a helicopter crash and an attack on an island to rescue the crew from an island where they had never been, nor was there mention of three Marines left behind in the fog of war.

The August 21, 2012 edition of Tell Somebody went into the archives for an interview recorded in 2002 with former Vietnam fighter pilot turned journalist Ralph Wetterhahn about his book The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War . Twenty-five years after the fact, Wetterhahn tracked down the story of the three Marines and wove into the story of the management of the operation in Washington.

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