Chickenhawk by Robert Mason Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Chickenhawk
Book Review: A Great Read
Summary: 5 Stars
This was one of the best books I have read on the Vietnam war. Very well written and extremeely moving. A great read.Book Review: A compelling, gut-wreching book that makes you cheer and makes you cry, leaving an unforgetable impression
Summary: 5 Stars
The author has a easy to read come-a-long with me style of writing that works exceptionally well given that he by-in-large avoids the politics except as they intersect in the daily life of an army pilot making these rare scenes very compelling such as Bob in is Saigon hotel on R&R contemplating the question, "Why don't the Vietnamese fight the VC like the VC fight the Vietnamese?" We share these thought with Bob as if for the first time in spite of the many years that have passed. The understanding that the war was not "winable" the way it was being fought dawns on both the author and the reader and we share the author's dispair.
The air action scenes are the best ever put to pen and the best ever likely to emerge from the SE Asian conflict. The author exhibits a rare and powerful ability to paint vivid scenes with a great economy of words that makes the text both crisp and very fast paced.
Honesty and rye humor coexist with raw human emotions of grief, injustice, fear and anger providing an authentic feel as the author spares no one especially himself a good hard look in the mirror and in spite of his defects the author becomes an unlikely hero who you can't help but like and this makes the closing lines so very painful.
Chickhawk is the best book produced for laymen on airmoble warfare and is certainly in the running for the best book ever about the Vietnam war.
Book Review: A harrowing account of a helicopter pilot's experiences in Vietnam
Summary: 4 Stars
Chickenhawk is the author's personal account of his experiences as an army helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. The book chronicles his experiences from his entry into flight school until his discharge from the army four years later. Mason gives a detailed accounting of his experiences and his feelings, relating the events and holding nothing back. His storytelling gives an impression of the war as long days of boredom and monotony, punctuated by various brief and extended periods of pure terror and brutal warfare.
Mason presents himself as a thinking, feeling soldier caught in a hellish war. He sees and feels the suffering and inhumanity the war inflicts on his fellow GIs, enemy soldiers, and on the people of Vietnam, and he relates the bravery and cruelty of both combating armies with an even hand. He also pulls back the curtain hiding the bureaucratic underpinings of the army and gives us a glimpse of how some men suffered under the inhumane indifference of army rules but other worked the system to their advantage.
Mason only touches tangentially on the political reasoning behind the war, and focuses mainly on his personal experiences. But he feels the futility of the war, the irrationality of fighting a foe that blended in and out of the jungle shadows seemingly at will, and of defending a people that didn't seem to appreciate US involvement in their affairs and actually may have been the enemy, hiding in plain sight.
All in all, a harrowing, insightful story, and a good read.
Book Review: An excellent book!
Summary: 5 Stars
Bob Mason wrote a very eloquent, very eye-opening account of his Vietnam tour as a helicopter pilot.
Having just lost my older brother, who was also a helicopter (slick) pilot in 67-68 with the D Troop 1/10 Cav (Shamrocks) and A Co., 4th Avn Bn (Black Jack), I found just how much he sugar-coated the "war stories" he told myself and our siblings when we were pre-teens/teens. After reading Chickenhawk, it's a miracle that Bob Mason (and my brother) ever made it home at all. It seems that if this war didn't get you physically, it sure got you mentally and emotionally - making you pay one way or another.
From a woman's point of view, I recommend this book to every woman who ever had a son, brother, uncle or husband in Vietnam. This is what our Vietnam heroes went through for US ... somehow, a mere "thank you" will never be enough.
Welcome home, Bob. Thanks for all you gave up for us.
Book Review: Been there, Done that
Summary: 5 Stars
I was in the 1/9th Blues at the time of which this was written. I was in the "Horseshoe LZ", wounded and medivaced. This book is real, like I wish I didn't remember it. We didn't know each other but we were in the same place at the same time. Belive me this guy was there and does a very good job of describing the situation. I sometimes give lectures to classrooms about Vietnam and I always recommend this book, so I recommend it to you readers as well.