'I read this as a young pilot about to embark on a career flying military helicopters It should have put me off for life Robert Mason tells a gripping account of the relentless courage & heroism amidst the insanity of the Vietnam war The final few pages are the most shocking I have read in any book' Tim Peake A stunning book about the right stuff in the wrong war As a child Robert Mason dreamed of levitating As a young man he dreamed of flying helicopters
- & the US Army gave him his chance They sent him to Vietnam where between August 1965 & July 1966 he flew more than 1000 assault missions In Chickenhawk Robert Mason gives us a devastating bird's eye-view of that war in all its horror as he experiences the accelerating terror the increasingly desperate courage of a man 'acting out the role of a hero long after he realises that the conduct of the war is insane' says the New York Times ' And we can't stop ourselves from identifying with it'