Chickenhawk

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It was loaned to me very graciously, many years ago, and once I got my own copy I have never stopped re-reading it. The description by Mason of the conditions and his time out there are so real that you can feel the sweat dripping down your back while scanning the jungle for Vietcong and snakes. For one thing, Mason's book contains one of the few really interesting accounts of military training written to date--in Mason's case, of his helicopter flight training. I think that with those ratios, you could afford to come to a prejudicial, sweeping generalization – like, kill them all. Mason has subsequently published two novels, Solo and Weapon, as well as a second memoir, Chickenhawk: Back in the World.

The first flight of the UH-1 was back in 1956 – October this year(2016) will mark 60 years of Huey models flying. He describes all the events unfolding around him vividly and he really takes you back in time with him. Mason’s primary activities centered on transporting troops, wounded, and bodies to and from the battlefield, but he was also involved with relocating refuges, to training missions, as a mail courier, to picking up and delivering supplies to combat areas and rear compounds. While waiting to see whether Burger could sell the book, Mason began writing what would eventually be his second book, a novel, Weapon.The most accurate estimate of the number of helicopter pilots who served in the war was roughly 40,000. If there is one book that people associate with helicopters in Vietnam and especially the Huey then it would most likely be ChickenHawk by Robert Mason. As a result, he winds up in Vietnam, where he reveals, that even in the early days of the war things weren't going well. I learned more about my husband’s tour in Vietnam from Chickenhawk than I ever imagined, my helicopter husband did not share how dangerous it was and we wrote each other daily about the events of our days ,me with four kids at home and I know now he was protecting me from reality. I was very impressed with the author's descriptions of the prison camp where he did his time; it was almost exactly the same kind of prison as one of the places I was incarcerated and Mason does a superb job of capturing the look and feel of it.

I am the right age to have been drafted for that war, but was not due to a variety of deferments and a high lottery number. It seems to me particularly apt as a summary of both the lack of maturity prevalent at the time and an explanation for the kind of stunned national resentment that has been simmering ever since: “Americans are big boys.Maybe the only people who wanted us around were the Saigon politicians who were getting rich from having the Americans here. Even as a warrant officer he engaged in the activities of a typical grunt rooting out tree stumps, digging fox holes, filling sand bags, and building a perimeter for his assault division. In fact, the first section of the book is so vividly descriptive of the mechanics and procedures of military flight instruction that you finish it believing you could almost fly a helicopter yourself. Reading through this torrential hell of the many valleys and outposts in Vietnam we the readers see the deep truth to the cynicism behind the events as they occur. Joe Galloway should be a book read first prior to reading “Chickenhawk” – I for one am happy it just happened this way for me.

Mason points out repeatedly, that later American troops would fight to retake the same territory as it had won earlier, but at an increasing cost for the United States. IMHO, it could have been a bit shorter in places, and I could have done with less on the technical and tactical aspects of flying a helicopter - but I'm sure folks who've been there liked having that stuff.The Vietnam Veterans I knew in the 1970's would show me scars on their body, tell me stories of the events of battles - all I could do was listen, I did; and, later I served in the USMC myself.