{"product_id":"tears-before-the-rain-an-oral-history-of-the-fall-of-south-vietnam-9780195053869","title":"Tears before the Rain: An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam","description":"\u003cp\u003eCBS camera-man Mike Marriott was on the last plane to escape from Danang before it fell in the spring of 1975. The scene was pure chaos: thousands of panic-stricken Vietnamese storming the airliner  soldiers shooting women and children to get aboard first  refugees being trampled to death. Marriott remembers standing at the door of the aft stairway  which was gaping open as the plane took off. \"There were five Vietnamese below me on the steps. As the nose of the aircraft came up  because of the force and speed of the aircraft  the Vietnamese began to fall off. One guy managed to hang on for a while  but at about 600 feet he let go and just floated off--just like a skydiver.... What was going through my head was  Ive got to survive this  and at the same time  Ive got to capture this on film. This is the start of the fall of a country. This country is gone. This is history  right here and now.\" In Tears Before the Rain  a stunning oral history of the fall of South Vietnam  Larry Engelmann has gathered together the testimony of seventy eyewitnesses (both American and Vietnamese) who  like Mike Marriott  capture the feel of history \"right here and now.\" We hear the voices of nurses  pilots  television and print media figures  the American Ambassador Graham Martin  the CIA station chief Thomas Polgar  Vietnamese generals  Amerasian children  even Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers. Through this extraordinary range of perspectives  we experience first-hand the final weeks before Saigon collapsed  from President Thieus cataclysmic withdrawal from Pleiku and Kontum  (Colonel Le Khac Ly  put in command of the withdrawal  recalls receiving the order: \"I opened my eyes large  large  large. I thought I wasnt hearing clearly\") to the last-minute airlift of Americans from the embassy courtyard and roof (\"I remember when the bird ascended \" says Stuart Herrington  who left on one of the last helicopters  \"It banked  and there was the Embassy  the parking lot  the street lights. And the silence\"). Touching  heroic  harrowing  and utterly unforgettable  these dramatic narratives illuminate one of the central events of modern history. \"It was like being at Waterloo \" concludes Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. \"It was so important  so historical. And today it is still very obvious that we Americans have not recovered from Vietnam....Nothing else in my lifetime was as important as that--as important as Vietnam.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45648180346933,"sku":"ByrdShop_0195053869","price":31.75,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780195053869.jpg?v=1781711973","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/tears-before-the-rain-an-oral-history-of-the-fall-of-south-vietnam-9780195053869","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}