Two outstanding memoirs from enviably erudite and grounded foreign-service wallahs:

Ninety-Day Wonder: Flight To Geurrilla War by John Ryder Horton

http://www.amazon.com/Ninety-Day-Won...1157275&sr=1-1

Tiger In The Barbed Wire: An American In Vietnam 1952-1991 by Howard R. Simpson

http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Barbed-W...1157183&sr=1-2

Also, Richard McKenna's justly popular, The Sand Pebbles, is perhaps one of the great works of American Fiction. The film is pretty (expletive) good, too..."Holman, come down!"

http://www.amazon.com/Sand-Pebbles-B...1158273&sr=1-1

The Mad Magazine take, "The Sam Pebbles", from 1968...

http://www.thesandpebbles.com/mad_ma...andpebbles.htm