A Gift of Barbed WireA Gift of Barbed Wire is a penetrating look at the lives of South Vietnamese officials and their families left behind in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975. A former Marine who served in Vietnam, Robert McKelvey went on to practice psychiatry and, through his work in refugee camps and U. S. social service organizations, met South Vietnamese men from all walks of life who had been imprisoned in re education camps immediately after the war.