The Phnom Penh Airlift

Book excerpt: Superbly written, this is an account by a participant in the airlift that supplied the blockaded capital of the Khmer Republic and several provincial capitals with food and other necessities of life during the last year of the United States' direct involvement in the Indochina War. Civilian pilots from many nations stepped in to fill the gap left by the departing American armed forces; they had to contend not only with makeshift facilities and heavy fire from the invading Vietnamese but also with a monumentally inept and corrupt Cambodian bureaucracy, which hindered the effective operation of the airlift in countless way.