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Mekong Delta Yacht Club: A Story About Grandad's Gators, Call-Up Reserves
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 11 2025
Pages: 290
Weight: 0.86
Height: 0.61 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
About The Book
Mekong Delta Yacht
The Year of TET 1968
It Happened in 1968: The Call-Up of Reserve Forces to Bolster the Undeclared War in Vietnam. An Untold Vietnam War Memoir of the 231st Army Reserve Boat Unit in Operation Game Warden
In 1968, after the first Tet Offensive, the U.S. Army made an extraordinary decision: it called up the 231st Army Reserve Boat Company from St. Petersburg, Florida - 190 men who had just 30 days to leave their civilian lives and prepare for combat in Vietnam.
What followed was unprecedented. Overnight, the 231st was transformed from a heavy boat unit (tugboats and cargo ships) into a combat-ready river force armed with 19 customized LCM-8 Mike Boats. Their mission: support the secretive Operation Game Warden, a joint effort to control the Mekong Delta's 3,000 miles of rivers and canals and cut off enemy supplies.
This is not a blood-and-guts story. It is a survival story of ordinary citizen-soldiers asked to do the extraordinary:
- How the 231st adapted to combat with almost no preparation
- The daily reality of firefights, ambushes, and Agent Orange spraying
- The miracle of completing their mission without losing a single man or boat
- The resilience, humor, and camaraderie that gave them the nickname The Beer Men - proudly flying the Florida flag on every run
A miracle, said Army brass, that all 190 came home alive.
If you want to understand the Vietnam War through the eyes of reservists suddenly turned warriors, this memoir by Tom Twitty takes you deep into the Mekong Delta, where survival meant courage, creativity, and an unbreakable bond of brotherhood.
It was standard procedure when the land-based troops saw a Florida Flag flying from the mast of an Army 231st Mike Boat, it called for a celebration of the successful Beer Run. Compliments of Granddad Gators' 231st Army Reserves.
Political Implications Discussed: How did we get there for an undeclared War?
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