Gary Holmes, Five Days One One Two, EN2, R/D 535, USN

Book Review: Backtracking in Brown Water

I served with Lt(jg) Kidder on the rivers of Vietnam.  I had greatly respect and admiration for the man then, and even more so now.  The period for our times in country were essentially identical - mid 1969 to mid 1970.  Rolland's book describes experiences on and about the rivers of Vietnam while at the same time gives the reader a sense of being there.  His writing style is precise, informative but not labored by heavy technical terms or with slang used on the rivers which might mire the story for a reader who was not there.  It is an uplifting book - of how people got on with their lives after the horrors of war. 

There are several incidents told in this book that brought me back there.  I knew Chief Tozer, but not as well as I would have liked to.   We were all shocked, for lack of better words, when he returned to our division to finish his tour of duty after his wife died.  He was a very nice man and whenever he was our patrol officer we would talk about our times in the Navy.  We were both "snipes" - Navy Engineers.  

Mike Paluda, COL, USA, Retired

Book Review: Backtracking in Brown Water

Once I started reading Backtracking in Brown Water, I could hardly put it down.  Damn you Rollie, you succeeded in taking me back to Vinh Long and Advisory Team 68, after a more than 40 year absence.  I thank you for honoring all who served, but especially patriots like Bob Olson and Walt Gutowski, Army guys you worked with that were members of Team 68 and that I knew well.  They were great men whose spirit and professionalism you captured well.  I highly recommend the book, especially to those who served in any capacity in the Mekong Delta. 

Mike Paluda
Marquette, Michigan (COL, USA, Ret.)

Letter from Jim Rost's Sister

Rolly -

Your book arrived about an hour ago.  I immediately turned to the chapters about Jimmy.  It was very moving to read those chapters in the book, even though I had read them in draft mode last year.

Right now I am so emotional that I feel like I can hardly catch my breath.  And I remember that that was the way I felt for months after Jimmy was killed. I would start to wake up each morning, and at a certain point, when I was awake enough, I would feel like someone had punched me in the stomach and knocked all the air out of me. The power of your written words has made me feel like that again.

But the feeling is not completely the same; it is different now, too.  There is something about reading a book that talks about my brother Jimmy's life that is very powerful.  I know that those chapters about him are a permanent memorial that someone could read 50 or 100 years from now.  So Jimmy will never be forgotten; the story of his life will always be there.  That is a new and wonderful feeling to have about Jimmy.  Again, thank you for taking the time and effort and talent and love to write about him.

James M. Wall, editor of The Christian Century magazine

Book Review: Backtracking in Brown Water

In this remarkably informed, and deeply moving, book, Rolland Kidder takes the reader back to the Vietnam War where he served as a combat naval officer. He weaves personal stories of friends who died with his own experiences as the skipper of a naval boat on river patrols. He also writes of his surprising encounters with a rich Vietnamese culture, a way of life sadly little known by those who waged the war from far away Washington, DC.

Welcome!

Welcome to what we hope will be an active source of information for news related to the book, Backtracking in Brown Water.

This book, as I relate in the Preface, really started as an article in 2010 in Naval History Magazine.  That article was prompted by a return trip I made to Vietnam in 2010.  The trip, in turn, was made possible through the efforts of a good friend, Thu Trung Van, who was back in Vietnam visiting his family.   Thu, like many Vietnamese Americans, is a veteran of the Vietnam War.   He is from South Vietnam and was fortunate to have escaped the country in 1975 before becoming one of those incarcerated in what were then called "re-education camps."   With only a three hour notice of the surrender to the North, he left Vietnam with his family and with essentially the clothes on his back to begin a new life in the United States.

I was fortunate to have been able to help Thu and his family get started in this country.   That, along with my own involvement as a U.S. Navy patrol officer in the Mekong Delta, is a history I have never forgotten.  My memories of what happened are reinforced by a Journal I kept while in Vietnam.   I hope that what I have written does justice to Thu's story as well as mine. 

Finally, there were three friends I made in those days whose names are on the Vietnam Wall.   Two were Navy and one was Army.  They were involved in different aspects of the war then being waged in the Mekong Delta.  What happened to them and, subsequently, to their families is a central part of the narrative in this story.  The experiences of those left behind is sometimes overlooked when writing about war.  What I learned from these families brings the experience of Vietnam back to today.  The book ends in a tribute to them and to their loved ones.

As our nation begins to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, it is important for Americans today to remember this time.   I hope that this book can help in understanding that history, at least in the way it played out in 1969-1970 as the War, though winding down, continued to be waged in the Mekong Delta.

Rolland Kidder

Firefight Audio Recording from Vin Te Canal, Vietnam 1969

A U.S. Navy Rockwell OV-10A Bronco of light attack squadron VAL-4 Black Ponies attacking a 

target with a 12.7 cm (5 in) "Zuni" rocket in the Mekong Delta, South Vietnam, ca. 1969/70. 

00:15  /  The first part of this tape is a re-recording of an OV-10 Bronco air strike on the Vinh Te Canal.  I am listening to and recording the events of a previous night when a PBR boat captain had recorded the sounds of this air strike.   He and I are laughing and commenting on what occurred.   At one point, a siren goes off, the signal to stop firing.  Then a Vietnamese sailor yells at a local outpost for them to cease firing.  The outpost had been firing mortars into an area where these Navy strike aircraft (with the call sign “Black Pony”) were flying.   From the tape, you can hear metal falling on the deck of the PBR as the machine guns are fired.   Tracers from PBR machine guns were often used to support air strikes by marking the location of enemy positions.  The sound of the twin engine OV-10’s can be heard as they fly low over the boat on their strafing runs toward the target.

04:15 / On October 26, 1969, I tape-recorded the radio traffic during an enemy attack against our heavy River Assault Group boats.  The position of our PBR was about a mile from the encounter.  We could see the firefight in the distance.  The call sign for the RAG boat commander was “Brass Rail”, and individual boats under attack are designated by various letters of the phonetic alphabet.  U.S. Navy Seawolf helicopters and fixed wing Black Pony attack aircraft can also be heard calling in.  A RAG boat radio sometimes remains keyed in the “on” position and you can hear yelling and firing in the background. The tape accurately describes the chaos, anxiety and fear experienced in a firefight.  

On the Vinh Te Canal, 1969

Rolly (right) talking things through with a mate on the deck of his Patrol Boat, SouthVietnam 1969

Captain M. B. Connolly, USN Commander, River Assault Division 132 / River Assault Squadron 13 (retired)

Book Review: Backtracking in Brown Water

In Backtracking, Rolly Kidder has delivered a brilliant chronicle of a part of the Vietnam conflict with which many may not be familiar. His own tour of duty on the rivers of Vietnam brought him in contact with two sailors and one soldier who would lose their lives there.  Forty years later, he revisited Vietnam and began to track down the families of the three men, and evaluate the impact of the loss on those families.

For anyone who served in the Delta, this account will evoke a full spectrum of memories. For those who did not serve there, it presents a superb study of the many facets of the Army and Navy activity in 1969 and 1970. Using his journal entries of the period and interviews with fellow combatants, he builds a compelling picture of what was happening in the Vietnam Delta. His follow-up visit to Vietnam forty years later is deftly presented without taint - neither remorse nor bias.

Kidder's New Book - Backtracking in Brown Water - Now Available Online...