The Last Three Names: The USS Mayaguez Incident

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May 8

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, consists of two black granite walls bearing the names of service members who died or remained missing as a result of their service in the war. Originally listing nearly 58,000 personnel, listed in order of the dates of casualty, the last three names represent US Marines killed during the USS Mayaguez incident, which occurred from May 12 to 15 of 1975. The lessons of this early Ford administration foreign policy setback are as salient today as they were 50 years ago.

The Mayaguez was a US merchant vessel en route from Hong Kong to Thailand when it was seized off the coast of Cambodia by a gunboat of the Khmer Rouge, a brutal communist regime that ruled the nation between 1975 and 1979. The fall of Saigon at the end of April 1975 precipitated a border dispute between the Cambodian and Vietnamese governments, leading to battles between the countries in early May. Later reports suggest that in the midst of all this, the Mayaguez was only 2 miles offshore and not flying any flag.

The ship was carrying a crew of 39 and more than a hundred containers of routine cargo, as well as 77 containers of US government and military cargo, some of which included materials taken from the US Embassy in Saigon just days before its fall. As the Khmer Rouge forces commenced boarding the ship, a crew member broadcast a mayday that was picked up and relayed to US officials. When Ford learned of the situation, he convened a meeting of the National Security Council.

The US decided to mount a hasty rescue mission. The ground troops would be US Marine units in Japan and the Philippines and Air Force security police personnel. Planning was complicated by the fact that officials did not know the location of the ship’s crew, the Air Force helicopter crews involved had no formal training for such a mission, and Khmer Rouge forces were well entrenched along planned landing zones. Moreover, the US had no formal relations with the new dictatorship in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital city.

During the rescue operation, the Mayaguez itself was not fired upon for fear of killing crew members. The Marines preparing to land on the nearby island were told that it was lightly defended. Yet the helicopters transporting them encountered intense fire, with the loss of many aircraft and crew members. Ironically, the rescue mission was launched just as the crew was released unharmed, at about the same time the deserted and undamaged ship was boarded and towed out to sea.

Once the ship and crew were recovered, a message from the White House ordered a cessation of offensive operations. Yet in the absence of safe landing spots for helicopters to evacuate the troops, intense fighting raged on. Eventually, aerial bombing of enemy positions blocked Khmer Rouge reinforcements and enabled the evacuation to commence. In one sense, the operation was a success, recovering both the ship and crew. But in other ways, it represented a profound failure, as 41 military personnel died in the operation

Yet this is not all. The bodies of some Marines and airmen who were killed in action had been unwittingly left behind, and three Marine survivors were stranded on the island, a fact not recognized until hours after the evacuation was completed. Years later, an eyewitness report suggested that the three were captured and executed by Khmer Rouge forces. They included Lance Corporal Joseph Hargrove, Private First-Class Gary Hall, and Private Danny Marshall, members of a machine gun team.

Christopher Lamb, a research fellow at the National Defense University, has suggested that the Mayaguez incident offers several key lessons. First, US leaders were preoccupied by the recent withdrawal from Vietnam and concerned that any further signs of US weakness might embolden North Korea to move against South Korea. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, who acted to reduce dangers to US military personnel, was later dismissed by Ford for failing to convey orders that he felt entailed unwarranted risk.

Because the rescue operation was so hastily assembled, poor coordination and communication bedeviled various arms of US forces. This helped to fuel the 1986 passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which made the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the senior ranking member of the Armed Forces and principal military advisor to the President, also giving commanders of such combat operations direct operational control of all US forces, in order to promote more coordinated joint military responses.

Another lesson stemmed from the failure to follow established policies. For example, Marine Corps policy specified that an assault on an entrenched enemy should include numerical superiority of 3-to-1, but despite a military intelligence estimate of 100 to 200 enemy forces, a force of just 270 was dispatched, about 100 of whom stormed the unoccupied Mayaguez. Moreover, many of the Marines involved in the assault expected to encounter a much smaller force, again reflecting poor communication.

Historian Gregory Miller of the Air Command and Staff College has emphasized that historical misunderstanding was partly responsible. Some advisors likened the situation to the 1968 USS Pueblo incident, in which a US military vessel and crew were held hostage for 11 months. This pressured Ford to resolve the matter quickly, before the crew could be relocated. Others likened it to the Cuban missile crisis, arguing that the President urgently needed a foreign policy win, though many circumstances were quite different.

It is vital that contemporary leaders study the Mayaguez incident. First, every challenge is not a crisis. Second, alternative perspectives and courses of action should be examined. Third, the use of force to resolve such a situation should not always be equated with a demonstration of power and resolve. Fourth, decisions should be re-examined as the situation evolves. In this case, once Ford decided that a military response was indicated, the team essentially stopped considering other options.

To avoid adding the names of more fallen personnel to our war memorials, we must study the lessons of these four days in May of 1975. This rescue mission in defense of freedom embodies the wisdom of a line composed by the ancient historian Thucydides that Lamb uses as the epigraph of his book: “What I fear is not the enemy’s strategy but our own mistakes.” Huge defense budgets and cutting-edge military technology are worth little if we do not invest the time and effort to learn from our experience.