A Spear-Carrier in Viet Nam

Memoir of an American Civilian in Country, 1967 and 1970–1972

McFarland & Co has published my new book! It’s a personal memoir of my times (yes, that’s “times”) in Viet Nam. It is like no other Viet Nam War memoir you will ever read. I was “in-country” for a total of two years and two months, but I am not a veteran.

The two months was my summer vacation spent as a volunteer for a Protestant Missionary organization. After my graduation from college, I spent a year learning to speak the Vietnamese language, then returned to Viet Nam for two years working to aid the people who suffered the most in this war, its Vietnamese civilian victims.

Mine is a unique story, and one that introduces you to an overlooked aspect of the Vietnam War. History is a part of this memoir; the history of “The Other War,” to “Win Hearts and Minds,” how it was waged and why we failed so spectacularly.

Michael Tolle was a civilian who went to Viet Nam not once but twice, to help alleviate the wholesale misery and suffering of the Vietnamese people.

While a student at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Michael spent his 1967 summer vacation as a volunteer for a Protestant missionary organization, bringing relief commodities on flights to isolated communities and military bases, including the Marine base at Khe Sanh.

Upon graduation from Georgetown in 1969, Michael joined the Agency for International Development (USAID). He spent a year in Washington D.C. learning to speak Vietnamese before leaving in mid-1970 to spend two years “in country.”

Michael spent the first year embedded in a largely military Provincial Advisory Team, aiding in the reception and resettlement of 10,000 Vietnamese refugees that had been evicted from Cambodia after the 1970 coup. Michael was then transferred to Saigon, to the War Victims Directorate (WVD). There he became the Deputy Director of its Refugee Division, assuming day-to-day responsibility for the care of refugees and war victims throughout the country. The work required travel, again in Air America planes, down the length of the country.

During that last year, a temporary duty experience in another province brought the Cambodian tragedy back to him in a way that has lingered since, almost fifty years later.