Saigon to Pleiku: A Counterintelligence Agent in Vietnam's Central Highlands, 1962?1963

by David Grant Noble

Overview

Initially stationed at the U.S. Army's counterintelligence headquarters in Saigon, David Noble was sent north to launch the army's first covert intelligence-gathering operation in Vietnam's Central Highlands. Living in the region of the Montagnards--Vietnam's indigenous tribal people, deemed critical to winning the war--Noble documented strategic hamlets and Green Beret training camps, where Special Forces teams taught the Montagnards to use rifles rather than crossbows and spears. In this book, he relates the formidable challenges he confronted in the course of his work.

Weaving together memoir, excerpts from letters written home, and photographs, Noble's compelling narrative throws light on a little-known corner of the Vietnam War in its early years--before the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and the deployment of combat units--and traces his transformation from a novice intelligence agent and believer in the war to a political dissenter and active protester.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476641492
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	09/30/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	204
File size:	20 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David Grant Noble is a writer, photographer and the author of numerous books about the American Southwest. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His website is www.davidgrantnoble.com.
David Grant Noble is a writer, photographer and the author of numerous books about the American Southwest. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His website is www.davidgrantnoble.com.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
Part
Memory
Becoming an Intelligence Agent
Honolulu and the Waikikian
Arrival in Vietnam
The Continental Palace
Reporting for Duty
The Case of the Purloined Penicillin
Saigon
Major Kumar
Central Registry
Rest and Relaxation in Hong Kong
Part
Assignment Pleiku
Intelligence Work in the Highlands
Dope, Drink and Sex
The Montagnards
Pleiku’s Missionaries
Travels Beyond Pleiku
A Week in Saigon
Life in Pleiku
Plei Mrong Is Dedicated
Plei Mrong Is Attacked
Bangkok
Ban Me Thuot
Final Months in Pleiku
Part
The War at Home
Epilogue
Author’s Service History
Index

Editorial Reviews

Earlier this afternoon I found a gem amidst the usual array of unsought mail: A copy of Saigon to Pleiku. ... I stole a sneak peak at the book and found myself hooked well into the account. As I expected, [Noble’s] writing skill is everywhere present. What I hadn’t expected was the quality production of the book. The page design is fine but the real surprise is the quality of the paper that permitted the illustrations to come through with greater clarity than one might find in books from the larger publishers.”—Don Lamm, former head of W.W. Norton

From the Publisher

2023-03-01
In this memoir, a Vietnam veteran reflects on his eye-opening, transformative disillusionment as a conscript in Saigon in 1962.

Noble was drafted into the Army in 1961. Only nine months after graduating from Yale, he was dispatched to Saigon to become an undercover counterintelligence special agent. For the next year, operating as a civilian, the then-22-year-old private opened a field office in the Central Highlands of northern Saigon to collect intelligence. In just one of many frank and revealing confessions appearing throughout this affecting memoir, the author openly admits to rushing to an Army fort’s library prior to his deployment to learn where Vietnam was, only to discover useless resources. “To find out that the army intelligence center’s atlas was so out-of-date was my first hint of things to come,” he writes of America’s ambiguous objectives and impending failure in Vietnam. In straightforward yet descriptive prose, Noble describes his 12 months in Saigon and Pleiku as “very intense and personally formative” and seared into his memory. He recollects his wartime experiences as a blond, 6-foot-2-inch “young, greenhorn special agent” by drawing from about 60 letters and postcards he’d sent home to his mother. She returned the material to Noble prior to her death in 2002. Using these letters and postcards, along with pages of photographs and spirited anecdotes, he reconstructs his striking wartime experiences and coming-of-age with vivid clarity. Despite the extreme cultural and language divide, the author expresses a fond appreciation for the Indigenous Montagnard tribes of Vietnam’s Central Highlands that he continuously observed and the human connections he experienced. They taught and instilled in him an unfettered sense of human dignity “whatever their social and cultural background or level of economic development.” Ultimately, through Noble’s clear-eyed perspective, the octogenarian’s memoir becomes a testament to his drastic transformation. Starting as a true supporter of United States government policy who believed he was drafted to assist “a struggling democracy fighting an aggressive communist dictatorship,” he eventually became a staunch dissenter—participating in anti-war rallies and marches in the late ’60s and aggressively protesting American military ineptitude.

A rich, resonant wartime chronicle of the enduring effects of war on an unprepared soldier.

Kirkus Reviews