Lost Crusade: America's Secret Cambodian Mercenaries

Naval Institute Special Warfare Series

by Peter Scott

When Peter Scott began a 1968 tour in Vietnam advising ethnic Cambodian Khmer Krom paramilitaries, they shared only an earnest desire to check the spread of communism. It took nearly thirty years and a chance reunion for him to realize just how much they had become a part of him.
Successfully blending intense combat narrative and stirring emotional drama, Scott vividly captures both the unique village culture of a little-known, highly spiritual people and their complex relationship with Special Forces soldiers, who found it increasingly difficult to match their charges' commitment to the costly conflict.
Building on his experiences as a Phoenix Program adviser near the Cambodian border, extensive interviews with Khmer Krom survivors, hundreds of hours of research in government archives, and requests for Freedom of Information Act disclosures, Scott seamlessly reconstructs the six-thousand-strong mercenary force's final crusade against communism, beginning in their ancestral home in 1970 and ending on the U.S. West Coast in 1995.

194 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1998

About the author

This is NOT the famous naturalist, sportsman, and founder of the World Wildlife Fund. He is listed under his full name:
Peter Markham Scott

Reviews

[Evan Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Scott was one of my English teachers in high school. He had served in Vietnam in a Special Forces role, as a military adviser to ethnic Cambodians who lived in Vietnam. It was a robust form of advising that included combat. He spoke eloquently of this in class. When we read battle accounts in Shakespeare, Mr. Scott, as I knew him then, provided fascinating insights based on his own experience. He was an outstanding teacher. (I hope veterans of our more recent wars will consider teaching, as they have so much to offer.) I became aware of his book after I returned from Iraq and wrote Generation Kill. At the time I read it, the U.S. was attempting to transition from a direct combat role to one of advising in Iraq. Invaluable lessons on this in Scott's book. His book is also an amazing coming-of-age story, written with deep humility and self-deprecating sense of humor.