Chickenhawk by Robert Mason Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $9.65 You Save: $7.35 (43%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $3.88 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Chickenhawk
Book Review: Hats off !!
Summary: 5 Stars
So much said about this amazing book. Up there with the top five VN books, not really sure...maybe even top two.
What makes it great ? I would have to say his honest skillful writing and ability to tell about his experience in Vietnam foremost as a helicopter pilot but also as a human being, sharing his strengths and weaknesses with the reader.
I think in my case he's the real "Biggles", not wanting to belittle the consequences of war.
The photo of Mason "trying to act normal with his family" when returning from his tour is speaking for itself....with a 1000 words.
No one is more shocked than I.
Book Review: Helicopter Combat At It's Best!
Summary: 5 Stars
This book abruptly puts you in the cockpit of a Huey Gunship helicopter during the early days (1966) of the Vietnam WarGunbird Driver: A Marine Huey Pilot's War in Vietnam (Blue Jacket Bks) Robert Mason, in "Chickenhawk" takes you on a graphic month by month tour of helicopter duty starting in August, 1965 and concludes with Mason's disillusionment with a war that would ultimately claim more than 65,000 American lives. Laotian Highway Patrol Mason vividly elucidates his paralyzing bouts of P.T.S.D., alcoholism and ultimately, like other returning Vietnam Veterans, unemployment upon return to civilian life. Hence is the tie in to his second book, Chickenhawk: Back in the World: Life After Vietnam As the reader discovers in Mason's second installment, he descends into criminal activity and lives the life of a drug smuggler transferring his military skills to illegal gains. Needless to say, it is interesting to note Mason's gradual change from an aggressive "pro-war hawk" supporting wholeheartedly the Vietnam War to his change after his D.E.R.O.S (military slang for "Date of Estimated Return from Overseas Service, i.e. when a soldier returns from his Vietnam tour and goes back to "The World" (the U.S.).Walking Wounded: Men's Lives During and Since the Vietnam War (Frontiers in Psychotherapy) Upon Mason's early days of adjustment transitioning from flying combat missions to the boredom of civilian life, he describes paralyzing anxiety of dying, P.T.S.D., and flashbacks of the war. For his flashbacks Mason condescendingly brands himself a "chicken". That's why he named this book "Chickenhawk". Mason was a soldier in regards to his exterior. However, his "insides" (being a coward) and his "outsides" didn't match! Mason angrily asks the reader a question he has been perplexed with for years: "Why didn't the South Vietnamese fight the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese like the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army fought the South Vietnamese? Mason asserted that without the support of "our allies" (the South Vietnamese) the U.S. was going to (and ultimately did) lose the war. However, since it was blatantly obvious to everyone that the South Vietnamese for the most part were corrupt and couldn't care less about victory, why was the U.S. there in the first place and continued until 1973 to fight a war that could not be won?How We Lost the Vietnam War Mason insists in "Chickenhawk" that the people in Washington must have known this. Counsel to the President: A MemoirThe signs were too obvious.Unheralded Victory: The Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, 1961-1973 Most American plans were leaked to the V.C. and N.V.A. . The South Vietnamese Army was rife with reluctant combatants, mutinies,and corruption. Mason wrote about an incident where an A.R.V.N. detachment of soldiers at Danang in I Corps squared off in a pitched firefight with South Vietnamese Marines! There was the ubiquitous South Vietnamese sentiment that North Vietnam, with it's leader, Ho Chi Minh, would persevere to victory. Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Thirty-Three American Soldiers Who Fought It Regardless, all these ideas are intertwined in a personal story chock full of raging madness, frightening extractions of wounded being dusted off, fierce combat and death. Dustoff: The Memoir of an Army Aviator This is one book I will reread many times!Book Review: Huey
Summary: 5 Stars
I should have read this book years ago! American Huey 369 (Americanhuey369.com) stimulated my interest in wanting to know more about the courages soldiers who went to Vietnam and flew helicopters.Book Review: If You Didn't Go, And Want To Know What It Was Really Like, Read Chickenhawk
Summary: 5 Stars
I was born in the early 1950s and grew up during the golden age of television. One of the great shows in the mid sixties was a show called The Whirly Birds, based on the adventures of a for hire helicopter company in California. They used the progressively changing Model 47 Bell helicopters for the series and I was enamored with them. I knew what I wanted to do with my life and that was to fly these things.
So as I approached the age of adulthood, I prepared to become a helo pilot. Of course back then, the only outlet for such training and a career was strictly military. So since I came up in a Navy house, I was going to join the Navy, go to flight training school, and see where I could go to fly.
The only problem with this whole senario is that Viet Nam happened. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to it. We would eat as a family around the supper table with the tv on right there, seeing the images each night of the war that was taking place on the other side of the world, but not giving it much importance in our everyday lives. That is until I announced that I was going to join the military and fly helicopters.
My father had had a son by another marriage in Germany, and I know he knew what was going on in Nam. He took me aside one day and said that if I really wanted to fly, then I should go to college, get a four year degree, and then after that, I could go into officer training school and then fly as an officer, hopefully getting a better assignment than a warrant officer, who basically had no authority. But what he was really saying was that he was hoping the war would be over by the time I got out of school. My father had great wisdom and the war did indeed end one month after I graduated. But I always felt that I was somehow deprived or cheated out of a childhood dream.
That's why when Robert Mason's book Chickenhawk came out, I was anxious to see what it was like and what I had missed. I can't thank my dad enough for sparing this kind hearted kid the misery that these brave men went through.
Chickehawk is a brutally honest look at the ravages of modern war conducted in a no-win situation. It's a heart breaking story of someone, very much like me, who wanted to fly helicopters, and finds himself in a situation that he has no control over, no input into, and barely escapes from, each day.
Mason describes in detail his time in the cockpit of a Huey, how the ship works, it's weaknesses, strongpoints, enough detail to satisfy the chopper enthusiast fully, but it's the day by day description of the ordeal to just stay alive that will shock, dismay, and leave numb the reader of this original Nam helicopter saga.
And that he makes it back alive is not enough, but what happens afterward will leave the reader out of breath and shaking his head in great sorrow for and empathy with Mason.
Chickenhawk was the first Viet Nam book specifically written from the eyes of a helo pilot and in my opinion, still the best. I've read it four times and plan to revisit it again soon, lest I forget what my father, in his love and wisdom, saved me from experiencing. Thanks Dad!
Book Review: If you want to read the finest book about 'Nam heli pilots....
Summary: 5 Stars
...this is THE one!
Mason takes you from his training days in Texas, to the jungles of Nam. He learns the tricks of the trade used by the good heli pilots to get in and out of 'hot LZ's', plus makes up a few along the way.
An honest book, with descriptions of the war, the people, and the struggles, which make it easy to be drawn into the story.
A great read, I recommend it to all my mates that love helicopters as much as I do.