Review of Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War And Its Aftermath
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Daphine Mathies
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Review of Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War And Its Aftermath
[Following is a volunteer review of "Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War And Its Aftermath" by Randy Miller.]
In reading Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War and Its Aftermath by Randy Miller, I didn’t expect to come away with the kind of heavy internal silence that usually follows good nonfiction. The book doesn’t go for flashy heroics or myth-building—it leans into something harder: the wear and tear of long, thankless service and the things it does to the mind. What makes it stick, I think, is how much time it spends inside the heads of men like Zack. This isn’t a war story trying to be profound. It’s a war story that quietly admits war is mostly waiting, routine, conflict without glory, and then, long after the uniforms come off, a betrayal too big for one person to carry.
Zack, in particular, becomes a kind of moral anchor throughout the book. His deployment aboard the USS Hawke isn’t filled with flashy shootouts or constant combat, but with the gnawing kind of tension that seeps into the bones. Night watches that feel like entire lifetimes. Rain that doesn’t stop. Orders that don’t make sense. You get the feeling early on that something is unraveling—not in the ship, but in him. He’s not weak. He’s not even particularly conflicted at first. But after enough nights staring out into black water with a shotgun in his hands, imagining swimmer attacks, imagining what he’d have to do, something in him shifts. The book makes that shift feel real. You start to carry it too.
What makes that even more impressive is how specific the scenes are. I mean, the writing pulls no punches when it comes to the logistics of daily life on a Navy destroyer. The UNREP scenes—underway replenishment for those of us who didn’t serve—are a kind of slow-moving chaos. Rain pounding down, cables whipping across the deck with enough force to tear limbs off, food crates swinging like wrecking balls. One near-miss with the USS Platte is described so vividly I could almost hear the cables snap. You’re right there, crouching behind the bulkhead, praying nothing breaks loose. It’s sweaty, nerve-fraying stuff.
And that’s also where I felt a small drawback creep in. The realism, while powerful, sometimes feels a little too granular. There’s a stretch involving a long-winded rant by Lieutenant Rollins about water systems and desalination, and it gets technical fast. I can imagine someone who didn’t grow up around military lingo or machines feeling a bit adrift. The frustration between officers and engineers is essential—it adds to the pressure on the crew—but I think some of the detail could have been trimmed without losing its punch. Or maybe I’m just not wired for boiler room drama.
Still, that level of realism has its strengths. You see it not only in action sequences but in the quieter, colder parts of shipboard life: standing guard soaked through for hours, silently watching for movement in the water, unsure if the ripple was a fish or a swimmer trying to blow the hull. And then there are moments like the one where the crew boards a junk filled with what seems to be humanitarian aid—rice, medical supplies—and then has to decide whether to seize it based on a hunch. The tension isn’t in the firefight, it’s in the doubt. You can feel it settle over them like fog.
I should also say that one of the most affecting things for me came in the way Miller writes grief. When Zack dies—years later, from the slow kill of Agent Orange exposure—it’s not dramatic. His funeral feels sunlit, hollow, tired. His widow Tally’s anger doesn’t come in a speech or a breakdown. It’s quieter than that. It simmers. That scene, in my opinion, did more to show the consequences of war than a dozen combat pages ever could. Because it’s not just that he died—it’s that he was let die. Forgotten by policy and paperwork.
For all of this, I’m giving Deadly Waters 5 out of 5 stars. I thought about docking a half-star for the overly technical moments, but they’re baked into the DNA of the story. Cutting them out would mean losing part of what makes the book honest. It’s not a clean, easy read. It’s not trying to be. It’s a book about endurance, about long-haul suffering, and about the sharp line between loyalty and loss. And if some of it feels like slogging through rain in a steel ship at midnight—well, maybe that’s the point.
******
Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War And Its Aftermath
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
In reading Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War and Its Aftermath by Randy Miller, I didn’t expect to come away with the kind of heavy internal silence that usually follows good nonfiction. The book doesn’t go for flashy heroics or myth-building—it leans into something harder: the wear and tear of long, thankless service and the things it does to the mind. What makes it stick, I think, is how much time it spends inside the heads of men like Zack. This isn’t a war story trying to be profound. It’s a war story that quietly admits war is mostly waiting, routine, conflict without glory, and then, long after the uniforms come off, a betrayal too big for one person to carry.
Zack, in particular, becomes a kind of moral anchor throughout the book. His deployment aboard the USS Hawke isn’t filled with flashy shootouts or constant combat, but with the gnawing kind of tension that seeps into the bones. Night watches that feel like entire lifetimes. Rain that doesn’t stop. Orders that don’t make sense. You get the feeling early on that something is unraveling—not in the ship, but in him. He’s not weak. He’s not even particularly conflicted at first. But after enough nights staring out into black water with a shotgun in his hands, imagining swimmer attacks, imagining what he’d have to do, something in him shifts. The book makes that shift feel real. You start to carry it too.
What makes that even more impressive is how specific the scenes are. I mean, the writing pulls no punches when it comes to the logistics of daily life on a Navy destroyer. The UNREP scenes—underway replenishment for those of us who didn’t serve—are a kind of slow-moving chaos. Rain pounding down, cables whipping across the deck with enough force to tear limbs off, food crates swinging like wrecking balls. One near-miss with the USS Platte is described so vividly I could almost hear the cables snap. You’re right there, crouching behind the bulkhead, praying nothing breaks loose. It’s sweaty, nerve-fraying stuff.
And that’s also where I felt a small drawback creep in. The realism, while powerful, sometimes feels a little too granular. There’s a stretch involving a long-winded rant by Lieutenant Rollins about water systems and desalination, and it gets technical fast. I can imagine someone who didn’t grow up around military lingo or machines feeling a bit adrift. The frustration between officers and engineers is essential—it adds to the pressure on the crew—but I think some of the detail could have been trimmed without losing its punch. Or maybe I’m just not wired for boiler room drama.
Still, that level of realism has its strengths. You see it not only in action sequences but in the quieter, colder parts of shipboard life: standing guard soaked through for hours, silently watching for movement in the water, unsure if the ripple was a fish or a swimmer trying to blow the hull. And then there are moments like the one where the crew boards a junk filled with what seems to be humanitarian aid—rice, medical supplies—and then has to decide whether to seize it based on a hunch. The tension isn’t in the firefight, it’s in the doubt. You can feel it settle over them like fog.
I should also say that one of the most affecting things for me came in the way Miller writes grief. When Zack dies—years later, from the slow kill of Agent Orange exposure—it’s not dramatic. His funeral feels sunlit, hollow, tired. His widow Tally’s anger doesn’t come in a speech or a breakdown. It’s quieter than that. It simmers. That scene, in my opinion, did more to show the consequences of war than a dozen combat pages ever could. Because it’s not just that he died—it’s that he was let die. Forgotten by policy and paperwork.
For all of this, I’m giving Deadly Waters 5 out of 5 stars. I thought about docking a half-star for the overly technical moments, but they’re baked into the DNA of the story. Cutting them out would mean losing part of what makes the book honest. It’s not a clean, easy read. It’s not trying to be. It’s a book about endurance, about long-haul suffering, and about the sharp line between loyalty and loss. And if some of it feels like slogging through rain in a steel ship at midnight—well, maybe that’s the point.
******
Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War And Its Aftermath
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
