Wolf by the Ears

This fast-moving, hard-hitting novel is based on fact. It is told by an active participant in and witness to the fall of the Khmer Republic to Pol Pot and his murderous Khmer Rouge forces. It challenges the reader to confront the actions of the Nixon Administration and contemplate those of the Trump era.

It is 1974. The Khmer Republic of Cambodia is cornered by the murderous Khmer Rouge forces led by Pol Pot. The Republic's defenses continue to deteriorate. Reporting from America turns increasingly dark. Indications are that the United States is going to abandon its ally. Khmer republicans now have the wolf by the ears. They can neither hold him nor safely let him go. US Army Major David DeRussy is ordered to return to Cambodia to serve a second tour as an assistant army attaché. His job is to observe the military situation, get inside the heads of the Republican Army's leaders, gauge their fighting effectiveness, and send assessments to Washington. Pol Pot's men are eager to kill or capture DeRussy. On his side of the front lines, any Cambodian can deliver DeRussy to the enemy to save his own skin. Who is he to trust on or off the battlefield? Cambodian friends and comrades-in-arms ask him whether the United States is going to run away. How is DeRussy to answer? DeRussy's personal wolf is a matter of conscience. How does he keep faith with his counterparts while his country does the opposite?

West Point's first 6th generation graduate, French speaking Alan Armstrong was one of three members of America's armed forces to serve the longest in the Khmer Republic. When he wasn't on battlefields with doomed soldiers, or meeting with his friend, Brigadier General Lon Non, brother of Cambodia's president, Marshal Lon Nol, he was either at the Khmer high command's Centre opérationnel or at the American Embassy, watching the country disintegrate. Alan and two others were the last staff members to exit the American Embassy on the day that the United State pulled out of Cambodia. He flew out on the last evacuee helicopter shoulder to shoulder with the American Ambassador, John Gunther Dean. See his interview on ThinkTech Hawaii ~ Cambodia.