Return to Saigon - A Memoir

From High School in Saigon to His Return There as a Wounded Naval Aviator, Vietnam Shaped His Life

By: Larry Duthie

Narrated by: Elio Agostini

You are with the author when he ejects from his burning Navy jet onto a karst ridge near Hanoi.

What follows in this meticulously researched memoir is an account of one of the most implausible and heroic rescues of the air-war - and the aftermath.

The events immediately following his rescue carry the author to a secret base in Laos and then to a makeshift hospital in Saigon. The larger story, however, is of the author’s complex relationship with Vietnam. It begins in Saigon, where he completes high school and comes to love the Vietnamese people. When he departs for college, he believes he’s done with the country. But when he drops out of college and enlists in the Navy, a series of improbable events land him in Navy flight school.

As a pilot, it’s a direct line to combat and his unexpected return to Saigon.

Three decades later he returns to Saigon, then travels north to Hanoi. From there he makes his way into the remote countryside where he and his flight leader were shot down. A local guide, a woman who remembers the day the two airplanes were blown from the sky, leads him up the steep karst ridge and then deep into a cavern. During the trek he learns her brother was one of the gunners. Later that day, seated at a table in her thatched home, he begins to find reconciliation.

The author experienced some of the fiercest air combat of the war. His ship’s air wing repeatedly hit the toughest targets in North Vietnam and suffered the highest loss rate - 39 of its 72 aircraft. The Jolly Green pilot who flew from the secret base in Laos to rescue the author earned the rarely awarded Air Force Cross and the three crew-members all were awarded Silver Stars. Following his hospitalization, the writer volunteered for a third combat deployment, where he completed 137 combat missions.

©2020 Larry Duthie (P)2021 Larry Duthie