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Colonel Edward P. Metzner, USA
(ret.) served four tours of duty in Vietnam and “is the American most decorated by the Republic of Vietnam.”
While in Vietnam, Colonel Edward P. Metzner “served as an advisor to South Vietnamese military commanders, from
district and province levels to the Vietnamese Joint General Staff.’ He is the author of More
Than a Soldier's War: Pacification in Vietnam and Vietnam: The Most Reported, Least Understood War--why?
He is also the co-author of Reeducation in Postwar Vietnam: Personal Postscripts to Peace.
According
to the book description of Reeducation in Postwar Vietnam: Personal Postscripts to Peace, “When
helicopters plucked the last Americans off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in 1975, countless Vietnamese who had worked
for the Americans remained behind. Many were arrested and sent to "reeducation" camps, where they faced forced labor,
indoctrination sessions, and severe privation. For a decade before the fall of Saigon, Edward P. Metzner served as an advisor
among the people of the beautiful and hotly contested Mekong Delta. After the war, he diligently sought news of the close
friends and comrades he had made among the Vietnamese military officers. Many had died; others could not be found.
When Metzner eventually located a few,
he believed their stories should be told. Three agreed to do so, and their accounts form the core of Reeducation in Postwar
Vietnam. Huynh Van Chinh and Tran Van Phuc, who had been colonels in the Army of Vietnam, lived through the deprivation and
torture of the camps and eventually found freedom in America. Le Nguyen Binh tells a different story: that of his dangerous
escape from Vietnam, with some of his junior officers and enlisted men, in three overloaded fishing boats. The matter-of-fact,
even stoic stories of these survivors stand as a testimony to their endurance and persistent desire to return to a life of
freedom.”
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