Book: “Honorable Exit: How a Few Brave Americans Risked All to Save Our Vietnamese Allies at the End of the War,” by Thurston Clarke

The Vietnam war is, for many Americans, the war “they have spent decades trying to forget” — a war whose purpose and execution were misrepresented by presidents and generals; a war that angered the home front and brought cross-generational protest into the streets; a war that, in its theater of operations, ended as a lost cause.

By its title, “Honorable Exit” implies that, while the war itself was less than honorable, some measure of honor was recovered in the actions of well-meaning Americans who, in the frantic days before South Vietnam fell to the communist North in April 1975, risked their lives and defied their superiors to save 130,000 South Vietnamese — wartime colleagues and their families — from execution or concentration camps.

The author, Thurston Clarke, calls these rescuers “American Schindlers,” after Oskar Schindler, rescuer of Jews in World War II made famous by the Thomas Keneally novel and Steven Spielberg film, “Schindler’s List.” Clarke’s subtitle — “How a Few Brave Americans Risked All to Save Our Vietnamese Allies at the End of the War” — understates the number, however: There are dozens of rescuers portrayed. But Clarke is something of a Schindler himself and clearly could not bring himself to leave off his own list any rescuer. Caveat lector: In addition to the author’s two-page list of principal characters, the reader will need a…