New Book Tells of South Asian Immigrant Who Saved America From a Historic Military Defeat
"Mirza Munir Baig had been rehearsing his entire life to step on to a stage like Khe Sanh and influence the course of history." --The Gunpowder Prince: How Marine Corps Captain Mirza Munir Baig Saved Khe Sanh
RENO, Nev., April 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- This year, as the news media celebrates the 50th anniversary of a major turning point in the Vietnam War, we are often being reminded how, in early 1968, world attention was focused on the isolated Khe Sanh Combat Base, and the plight of outnumbered American forces being besieged by nearly 30,000 North Vietnamese Army soldiers.
Yet, what few know is that the fate of those 6,000 Americans hinged upon the talent of a small band of resourceful officers at Khe Sanh, whose high-stakes responsibility it was to devise imaginative schemes, dependent on the ebb-and-flow of the battle swirling around them, to save the base.
Chief among them was thirty-six-year-old, Marine Corps Captain Mirza Munir "Harry" Baig, a scholarly, Cambridge University-educated, Pakistani immigrant, born in India, and heir to a celebrated family military tradition dating back centuries to the Mongol conquest of the Western Himalayas. His classical education, an uncanny grasp of his adversary's historical tendencies, and some murky, counterintelligence work developing spy networks deep into North Vietnam, permitted the enigmatic Baig, like some chess grandmaster, to "get into the heads" of North Vietnamese military strategists—anticipating their every move.
Award-winning author Michael Archer worked alongside this brilliant eccentric throughout that bitter ten-week siege. Supported by declassified American and Vietnamese military records and memoirs, Archer leaves little doubt that Baig's presence at Khe Sanh was critical in saving thousands of his fellow defenders from death or captivity—and averting one of the gravest military defeats in American history.
For more information about The Gunpowder Prince: How Marine Corps Captain Mirza Munir Baig Saved Khe Sanh (Paperback:143 pages/$9.95) please visit www.michaelarcher.net.
Author Michael Archer served in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine in 1967-1968. His books include A Patch of Ground: Khe Sanh Remembered, which VIETNAM magazine called "the best first-hand account of the battle of Khe Sanh;" and The Long Goodbye: Khe Sanh Revisited, winner of FOREWORD Reviews 2016 INDIES Book of the Year Award. Michael lives in Reno, Nevada.
Contact: Michael Archer
Phone: (775) 846-4995
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.michaelarcher.net
SOURCE Michael Archer
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