Chapter 14 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 14, p. 181—Richard and family move back to Virginia Beach and Richard is at school in Washington DC. Richard has had Vietnamese language school and now he is learning espionage. Richard also learns French and then flies off by himself to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Richard realizes he again is leaving his family and more importantly he is leaving the naval bureaucracy and chances to get ahead in his career. Richard dreams of a Navy SEAL command position, but instead arrives in Cambodia in September 1973. In Phnom Penh, he makes jokes that the word for SEAL in French is Phoque, like the English curse word. Richard meets Cambodian Commodore Vong Sarendy, who is distant at first. Thomas Enders, the deputy chief of the American Mission, tells Richard that he must think about how to stop sinking of supply vessels to the...