To the Rescue

By Edwin Warner

THE FOUR DAYS OF MAYAGUEZ

by ROY ROWAN

224 pages. Norton. $7.95.

For some it was the proper reaction. For others it was overreaction. Six months later, the adventure of the Mayaguez remains one of the murkiest "rescues" in American naval history. This fresh, immediate account by Roy Rowan, TIME Hong Kong bureau chief, is not likely to alter many opinions, but it manages to put the event in lucid perspective.

The 40 crewmen of the Mayaguez did not seem destined for heroism. They were the sort of obscure seadogs found aboard any patched and battered merchant ship. In Rowan's nimble sketch, even the 62-year-old captain, Charles Miller, is not a born leader. Instead, he seems a canny, experienced old salt--the sort whose grace emerges only under pressure. Indeed, when the sailors considered an attempt to overpower their captors, it was Miller who counseled prudence and avoided bloodshed.

There was an air of unreality to much of the episode. The Cambodians giggled and cavorted and had a habit of carelessly leaving their weapons about. They gnawed at apples and oranges but balked at drinking Kool-Aid until Miller downed some to show that it was not poison. Nevertheless, the men on the Mayaguez feared that they might be beheaded or shot--or, at a minimum, held hostage for years like the crew of the Pueblo, captured by the North Koreans. The greatest immediate danger came from American airmen who were bombing and strafing Cambodian gunboats in an effort to prevent the crew from being taken to the mainland. Unfortunately, the crew had been transferred to one of those boats. Some were wounded by shrapnel in the attacks; all of them were gassed.

Back in Washington, President Ford was determined to take firm enough action to save the crew and to discourage similar captures. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was anxious to prove, after the Saigon evacuation, that the U.S. had not lost its will to fight. Thus the White House ordered the Marines to recover the Mayaguez and attack Koh Tang, one of the islands in the area. Sterner measures were rejected.

As the world acknowledges, the show of force worked. But the operation proved costly: 18 Marines were killed in action; 23 airmen died in a helicopter crash on their way to the combat zone. The author seems to beg some of the larger questions raised by the rescue: Would the Cambodians have released their prisoners if the U.S. had demonstrated less power? How serious were the Cambodians about holding their captives?

Still, no journalist has treated the four days of the Mayaguez with such attention to personal and military detail. His facts, speedily and scrupulously assembled, make a strong, if arguable case for the American response. To Rowan, amid all the ambivalent U.S. op erations overseas, the recovery of the Mayaguez now appears to be an odd but valid entry in the saga of victory at sea.

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