Vietnam Veteran, Rye Resident is Keynote Speaker
Vietnam veteran, Rye resident and Rye Post member Martin Dockery will deliver the keynote address Rye’s 2017 Memorial Day ceremony. After introductory remarks by Post Commander Fred deBarros, additional welcoming remarks will be made by Mayor Sack, NYS Senator George Latimer and NYS Assemblyman Steve Otis.
The ceremony will begin at 10:30 am on May 29, 2017 at City Hall.
In September 1962, when Martin Dockery landed in Saigon, he was a young, determined, idealistic U.S. Army first lieutenant convinced of America’s imminent victory in Vietnam. While most of the twelve thousand U.S. military advisors in-country at the time filled support positions in Saigon and other major cities, Dockery was one of a handful of advisors assigned to Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) combat units.
For eight months Dockery lived and fought in the heart of the Mekong Delta with an ARVN infantry battalion on missions and operations that often lasted several days. And for most of that time, whether tramping through the steaming, leech-infested jungle, hiking across canals, or engaging in sudden firefights, Dockery was the only American soldier with the unit.
Martin’s book Lost in Translation: Vietnam: A Combat Advisor’s Story provides inescapable evidence that as early as 1962 the writing was already on the wall concerning the outcome of the Vietnam War. Although it would take U.S. leaders more than a decade to divine what the young officer learned in a single year, Dockery’s personal and penetrating analysis of the war—which he presented in a lecture at a Special Forces facility in Germany one week after his tour in Vietnam ended—proved chillingly accurate. Those who send soldiers to war should consider the realities and truths within these pages.
Rye, NY American Legion Post 128 