Cowboy: The Interpreter Who Became a Soldier, a Warlord, and One More Casualty of Our War in Vietnam - Paperback

In 1964, Daniel Ford took the publisher's advance for the sale of his first novel, and with it bought a ticket to Saigon. For several months, he hitchhiked around the country with American helicopter crews and joined the government forces -- both Vietnamese and ethnic minorities -- in their quest to find and destroy Communist guerrillas. The most memorable of these warriors was a young man whom the Americans knew as Cowboy, who liked to introduce himself as Philippe Drouin, and who had been born Y Kdruin Mlo in the forbidding Highlands where the lowland Vietnamese were hated and feared. Here Dan returns to that long-ago war and to the story of one of its most fascinating fighters, who in the end became one of its victims.