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They fundamentally changed the way that war was fought. Probably nothing is more iconic from that period than the Bell UH-1 Huey. The Huey was the first turbine helicopter to enter production for the US military and brought a significant boost to capabilities over existing machines.Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (4 August 1983). "No Headline". The New York Times . Retrieved November 6, 2009. More than any other writer, Mason has been able to capture the feeling of what it was like to be there.” -The Philadelphia Inquirer Death is almost always gruesome as it is described by Robert Mason in this most gruesome book. There is the intensity of heroism too. Eventually there is the heroism of going on with life having experienced so much death. 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). While waiting to see whether Burger could sell the book, Mason began writing what would eventually be his second book, a novel, Weapon. In January 1981 he was arrested for attempting to smuggle a boatload of marijuana from Colombia into the United States.

The seventh chapter, "The Rifle Range", describes the events of January 1966, in which Mason crashed his Huey on landing, causing moderate damage but escaping without injury. Can’t blame them, can you?” said the lieutenant. “Every time they do, we clobber the sh1t out of them.’ Tweet “22yrs old, aircraft captain of a Huey in Vietnam, flying into hot LZs and saved a bunch of people”] Tell Me You're Afraid", chapter thirteen, covers Mason's last months in Vietnam, July and August 1966. All the humor notwithstanding, you can’t help noticing that the book gets darker as it progresses. You’re not only witnessing the author’s flying and derring-do, you’re also there as he is being broken as a human being, succumbing first to the various temptations, suffering the consequences and losing his mental health and of course eventually dragging his family into it.As he began to suffer from the accumulated stress at the end of his tour, he found he was most comfortable when he was flying. classic descriptions of helicopter warfare that are among the most realistic and exciting in print...humor and pathos, anger and frustration...grit, grime and gore." Green snakes and 31 out of 33 species being poisonous. And having the "eyes" and cognition as that man did who knew he just got bit- so laid down in the deep grass to sleep and to die.

Halfway through the title of the book is explained. Mason has many stories of close calls. It is amazing that he makes it through to write a book about it. There is a toll. A toll to his mind, to his mentality. The strain and stress have taken their toll. How do you get through what he has seen? What he has had to do? ‘My days were good; my nights were hell’.And I just have to add several issues that others sure haven't in regard to details in this telling. I STILL know at least 4 men who use the phrase "swave and deboner". Said AND spelled exactly like that. In fact, I heard it last week- just outside a conference room after a MRI between two of them. In chapter nine, "Tension", Mason details his R&R in Taiwan in March 1966 and his decision to volunteer for a transfer out of the "Cav" to another helicopter unit.

December 1965 is described in chapter six, "The Holidays". Mason and a similarly experienced pilot, Resler, who became one of Mason's closest friends from Vietnam, began flying together. It is very simply the best book so far out of Vietnam—the best book so far and the best book by far." A true, bestselling story from the battlefield that faithfully portrays the horror, the madness, and the trauma of the Vietnam WarYeah, as long as we have helicopters, Phantoms, and B-52 bombers, I thought. I said ‘Maybe the war is almost over.’” The book was published in 1983, the year Robert Mason was forty-one years old, eighteen years after he was a twenty-three year old in Vietnam. As a child, Robert Mason dreamed of levitating. As a young man, he dreamed of flying helicopters - and the U.S. Army gave him his chance. They sent him to Vietnam where, between August 1965 and July 1966, he flew more than 1,000 assault missions. All or a portion of this article consists of text from Wikipedia, and is therefore Creative Commons Licensed under GFDL. Add this one to my long list of books about the American War in Vietnam. 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. The short story is that I was considering fleeing to Canada if I was drafted but never had to make that momentous decision that would have significantly changed my life. I never came to that fork in the road so will always wonder what I would have done if I was actually faced with that choice.