Review of Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War And Its Aftermath
-
David O Okoth
- Book of the Month Participant
- Posts: 4
- Joined: 01 Jul 2025, 11:59
- Currently Reading:
- Bookshelf Size: 0
- Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-david-o-okoth.html
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.]
I went into Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War and Its Aftermath expecting a typical war memoir—gritty battlefield stories, heroic stand-offs, the occasional sentimental reflection. What I didn’t expect was a slow-burn narrative that leaned into the soul-draining grind of naval life, and somehow made every menial task—every line of dialogue during a fueling op, every soggy night watch, every bureaucratic misstep—feel essential to the emotional weight of the story. The strength of this book, I think, lies less in its battles than in its bone-deep exhaustion. Randy Miller doesn’t glamorize naval warfare; he strips it down to its rusted bolts, rain-slicked decks, and the emotional fray that builds one shift, one order, one mistake at a time.
What I found especially interesting was how much space the book gives to the depiction of day-to-day operations aboard the USS Hawke. It’s not all explosions and heroics. More often, it’s grease under the nails, fuel lines whipping through the air like steel snakes, and watch rotations that feel like a sentence. A lot of war memoirs brush past the sheer monotony of military routine, but Miller uses that as a drumbeat—constant, dull, numbing—to frame how these sailors broke down slowly, not just physically but morally too. You get these vivid images: a soaked Zack standing guard during a downpour from 2000 to 2400 hours with his shotgun, or the crew hauling crates during a resupply while sea spray lashes their eyes and knees wobble from exhaustion. It’s not flashy, but it feels real in a way I wasn’t ready for.
That said, when the action does come, it comes hard and fast. One of the best examples—and maybe one of the most nerve-shredding sequences—is the underway replenishment scene where the USS Platte yaws and the fuel lines snap. The tension was claustrophobic. I could feel the danger in every sentence. Metal whips slicing through air, the deck crew frozen under the threat of cable lash, and Palmer making a split-second call that probably saved lives. It’s followed by a perfect bit of human drama: Lieutenant Moretti publicly berating him for acting without orders. That moment hits because it’s layered—heroism punished, instincts questioned, and the chain of command tightening around every breath.
But I have to say, and maybe this is just me being unfamiliar with naval lingo, the sheer volume of military jargon sometimes pulled me out of the narrative. Acronyms like “UNREP” or terms like “Special Sea and Anchor Detail” stack up quickly, and while I could usually piece them together, I did catch myself re-reading a few sections just to figure out what exactly was going on. It’s not that the language is inaccessible—it’s that it’s thrown at you without much pause, and I wonder if a reader without any military background might feel like they’re eavesdropping on a conversation in a foreign dialect. I wouldn’t say it ruined anything, but it did slow me down in places where I wanted to stay immersed.
Still, I can’t really knock the book for being authentic to its world. In fact, I think that’s part of what makes it so compelling. Even the technical bits that made me stumble added to the sense of disorientation—the same kind of fog the sailors probably lived in daily. The book has this way of balancing the mechanical and the emotional: one moment you’re deep in an engine room with Rollins screaming about potable water levels, and the next, you’re in Zack’s head, watching him wrestle with the moral ambiguity of confiscating food from a junk that might’ve been smuggling arms—or might’ve been feeding kids.
I think the choice to end the book without a dramatic finale, to instead fade back into the unglamorous repetition of shipboard life, is deliberate. There’s no moment of triumph, no clean closure. And for a book about the forgotten arm of the Vietnam War—the sailors who were exposed to Agent Orange offshore and then denied help back home—maybe that’s fitting. War doesn’t end in a moment. It drags. And for many of these men, it kept dragging long after the shooting stopped. Ideally, I’d give Deadly Waters a full five out of five. It’s seamless and polished in every moment, and earns your attention throughout.
******
Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War And Its Aftermath
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
I went into Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War and Its Aftermath expecting a typical war memoir—gritty battlefield stories, heroic stand-offs, the occasional sentimental reflection. What I didn’t expect was a slow-burn narrative that leaned into the soul-draining grind of naval life, and somehow made every menial task—every line of dialogue during a fueling op, every soggy night watch, every bureaucratic misstep—feel essential to the emotional weight of the story. The strength of this book, I think, lies less in its battles than in its bone-deep exhaustion. Randy Miller doesn’t glamorize naval warfare; he strips it down to its rusted bolts, rain-slicked decks, and the emotional fray that builds one shift, one order, one mistake at a time.
What I found especially interesting was how much space the book gives to the depiction of day-to-day operations aboard the USS Hawke. It’s not all explosions and heroics. More often, it’s grease under the nails, fuel lines whipping through the air like steel snakes, and watch rotations that feel like a sentence. A lot of war memoirs brush past the sheer monotony of military routine, but Miller uses that as a drumbeat—constant, dull, numbing—to frame how these sailors broke down slowly, not just physically but morally too. You get these vivid images: a soaked Zack standing guard during a downpour from 2000 to 2400 hours with his shotgun, or the crew hauling crates during a resupply while sea spray lashes their eyes and knees wobble from exhaustion. It’s not flashy, but it feels real in a way I wasn’t ready for.
That said, when the action does come, it comes hard and fast. One of the best examples—and maybe one of the most nerve-shredding sequences—is the underway replenishment scene where the USS Platte yaws and the fuel lines snap. The tension was claustrophobic. I could feel the danger in every sentence. Metal whips slicing through air, the deck crew frozen under the threat of cable lash, and Palmer making a split-second call that probably saved lives. It’s followed by a perfect bit of human drama: Lieutenant Moretti publicly berating him for acting without orders. That moment hits because it’s layered—heroism punished, instincts questioned, and the chain of command tightening around every breath.
But I have to say, and maybe this is just me being unfamiliar with naval lingo, the sheer volume of military jargon sometimes pulled me out of the narrative. Acronyms like “UNREP” or terms like “Special Sea and Anchor Detail” stack up quickly, and while I could usually piece them together, I did catch myself re-reading a few sections just to figure out what exactly was going on. It’s not that the language is inaccessible—it’s that it’s thrown at you without much pause, and I wonder if a reader without any military background might feel like they’re eavesdropping on a conversation in a foreign dialect. I wouldn’t say it ruined anything, but it did slow me down in places where I wanted to stay immersed.
Still, I can’t really knock the book for being authentic to its world. In fact, I think that’s part of what makes it so compelling. Even the technical bits that made me stumble added to the sense of disorientation—the same kind of fog the sailors probably lived in daily. The book has this way of balancing the mechanical and the emotional: one moment you’re deep in an engine room with Rollins screaming about potable water levels, and the next, you’re in Zack’s head, watching him wrestle with the moral ambiguity of confiscating food from a junk that might’ve been smuggling arms—or might’ve been feeding kids.
I think the choice to end the book without a dramatic finale, to instead fade back into the unglamorous repetition of shipboard life, is deliberate. There’s no moment of triumph, no clean closure. And for a book about the forgotten arm of the Vietnam War—the sailors who were exposed to Agent Orange offshore and then denied help back home—maybe that’s fitting. War doesn’t end in a moment. It drags. And for many of these men, it kept dragging long after the shooting stopped. Ideally, I’d give Deadly Waters a full five out of five. It’s seamless and polished in every moment, and earns your attention throughout.
******
Deadly Waters: The Vietnam Naval War And Its Aftermath
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
