Reveals how wartime loss in the Vietnam War transformed U.S. politics, arguing that the effort to recover lost warriors was as much a means to establish responsibility for their loss as it was a search for answers about their fate.

Author asserts that the hopes of loved ones are kept alive by those who would exploit their sorrow.

Leave No Man Behind is the powerful story of Garnett "Bill" Bell's quest, at great personal cost, to find and bring home the POWs and MIAs of the Vietnam War. With his encyclopedic knowledge of the Vietnamese Communists and his fluency in various regional dialects, he penetrated the system the Communists had created to exploit American POWs for diplomatic concessions, or their remains and personal effects for financial rewards. From his days as a young infantryman on covert missions, to receiving American POWs as part of "Operation Homecoming," being one of the last Americans to get on a helicopter as Saigon fell, slogging his way through forlorn, malaria-ridden camps to interview refugees, returning to Vietnam as the first US government POW/MIA office Chief, and testifying in front of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA affairs, Bell shares his perspective as a witness to history as it unfolded.

The untold story of U.S. POW Rescue Efforts During the Vietnam War.