Chickenhawk by Robert Mason
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Book Reviews of Chickenhawk
Book Review: Woes of a wobbly-one.
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently gave away my copy of this marvelous book to my son. It wasn't too long before I went into withdrawal and bought myself another copy. Bob Mason is a truly honest man, which is not to say that he never lied, cheated, or stole, but that he is one of those rare individuals who can look at himself in the mirror and see himself as he really is, warts and all. That takes an admirable form of courage that most of us don't have. I couldn't do a memoir the way he did. I had to resort to an alter-ego in my own book. I won't claim more warts than Bob, but the ones I have I don't like.
Like Bob, I got into the Army Warrant Officer Helicopter Flight Program after high school in 1967. I was a typical wobbly-one, long on enthusiasm for flying, short on brains, experience, maturity, character, morals, and wisdom. Hey, I was only nineteen! But I sure liked to fly, especially choppers, especially Bell Helicopter's masterpiece, the UH-1 `Huey.' Bob was just coming home from Vietnam the year before I enlisted. He was one of the pioneers of the airmobile concept, assigned to the 1st Cav and traveling to Vietnam by boat with the unit's choppers lashed to the deck. I was appalled at the initial treatment he and the other warrant officers received once they arrived in country. They had to dig their own bunkers. Warrant officers are `supposed' to be officers, rating the respect and privileges of commissioned officers. Actually the commissioned officers used to joke that a warrant officer was just a spec-four with a club card. Still I had to admit that when a unit is freshly arrived in a combat zone, getting shelter up quickly is essential, and I would hate to have been killed in a mortar attack that night because I was too proud to fill sand bags that day.
The real appeal of the book is the white-knuckle flying action scenes. They were often times hair-raising nightmares, and the crews were scared to death, but some how they got the job done anyway--hence, the name of the book, `Chickenhawk.' Warrant officers were funny that way--no mission was impossible. Commissioned pilots tended to fall back on the regulations when things got rough. They had college degrees and were smarter than we were. They tended to live longer too. There were exceptions in both cases, but what I said was generally true in Army aviation.
I was saddened by the fall from grace that Bob experienced when he returned stateside. He had spent a year comporting himself bravely, and now he was haunted by that same bravery. I bought and read his second book, curious I guess, at just how far his downward spiral would take him. And he sank pretty far before he finally autorotated his life to a safe landing. I finally concluded that he was one of those guys who should have stayed in combat, extending his tour 12 months at a time, taking a month off in between to visit his wife in Honolulu. That was where he was at his best--impossible missions, tracers flying everywhere, too dark to see, too dangerous to turn on the lights, breaking every flight safety regulation imaginable, and then getting chewed out by the old man while he was pinning another air medal on his chest. Of course if Bob had done that, we probably wouldn't be reading his fine books today.
--Ejner Fulsang, author of "A Knavish Piece of Work," www.AarhusPublishing.com
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: The Best Vietnam (Helicopter) War Memoir Yet Written
Summary: 5 Stars
I first read this book years ago, and it is without a doubt one of the best war memoirs on my shelf and one to which I regularly return (as I just did for the third time, to read during a lengthy trip abroad).
The book recounts the training and duty tour of Robert Mason, a helicopter pilot who served in the air cav during the height of the Vietnam conflict. Many consider it the best book written by a Vietnam vet and I would be inclined to agree (the only close contender would be the sniper memoirs of Carlos Hathcock, penned by Charles Henderson). Chickenhawk is compelling from start to finish.
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. 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. (To appreciate fully Mason's accomplishment in rendering this experience so fascinating, one need only contrast it with that of Marcus Lutrell's recent "Lone Survivor," which manages to turn what should be an equally fascinating account of Navy SEAL training into one of the most annoying and sleep-inducing chronicles of push-ups and special ops ever written). And once Mason starts recounting his actual combat experiences, you simply can't put the book down.
Partly what makes Chickenhawk such a unforgettable read is that Mason makes no effort either to doctor the facts about his time in Vietnam, his love of flying (even in combat), or about his own flaws and failures. This is no boastful attempt to paint himself a hero (though among the heroes of that war, Mason is surely one), but a gut-wrenching look into a soldier's soul and the soul of a nation at war. The result is one of the most stunning books about war ever written--and I've read hundreds. And I will certainly read this one many times more.
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: Whop, whop, whop and other stories...
Summary: 5 Stars
Bob Mason has written a stunning book about ordinary people caught up in the eternal madness of War. It could be any war, but Bob's war was Vietnam.
Chickenhawk puts you right there in the cockpit of a Huey Slick (the Slicks were the troop carriers, rather than having a Gunship or Medevac/Dustoff role) as Bob takes you into endless near-impossible hot LZ operations to deploy, extract and supply/re-supply the kids who were in the front lines of a war that should never have happened.
His technical descriptions of the extreme combat flying techniques that he had to employ in order to survive under heavy fire, are exceptional. Yet the heart of the book lies not in his haunting yet beautifully described combat scenarios, but in his humanity and ruthless honesty and soul searching, as he tries to come to terms with what the war did to him as a human being.
Bob is a living testimony to the truth that PTSD is a normal reaction to an insane situation, and the fact the Nam Vets who suffer from PTSD are not the ones who are crazy. The dishonest war mongers whose machinations denied Ho Chi Minh his chance to rule a united Vietnam via free elections, are the ones who are insane, and the ones who should single-handedly carry the Guilt that the war generated among so many who were caught up in it.
Welcome home, soldier.