Chickenhawk - Robert Mason

This memoir by a helicopter pilot in Vietnam in 1965-66 is one of the best non-fiction "personal" books to come out of that war, on a par with Michael Herr's Dispatches. The book begins in 1964 as young Robert Mason begins training as an Army Helicopter Pilot. He returned home a wrecked man after a long time in combat flying over 1,000 missions. He flew with the 1st Air Cav and saw a great deal of action, but the book is just as good on the ground as in the air, giving a remarkably vivid sense of what the experience was like. The area of operations is mainly in the central area of South Vietnam - Qui Nonh, Kontum, Pleiku - and among ...