Ralph Christopher

River Rats Ralph Christopher

The United States Navy's fight for control of the waters of Southeast Asia. By far the greatest contribution of the narrative is the insight it provides into the hows and whys of United States involvement in Vietnam, and the attempt of that involvement to bring freedom to those who were unable to achieve it by their own efforts. We see the United States more as a caretaker and less as a policeman in terms of motivation for its involvement half a world away. And . . . we see the tremendous price paid by those who served to ensure that freedom - ordinary men who, by fate, were thrown together in a strange land, and who fulfilled a part of their destiny, and their Nation's, on the brown water. Weldon Bleiler