More than half a million copies of Chickenhawk have been sold since it was first published in 1983. Now with a new afterword by the author and photographs taken by him during the conflict, this straight-from-the-shoulder account tells the electrifying truth about the helicopter war in Vietnam. This is Robert Mason’s astounding personal story of men at war. A veteran of more than one thousand combat missions, Mason gives staggering descriptions that cut to the heart of the combat experience: the fear and belligerence, the quiet insights and raging madness, the lasting friendships and sudden death—the extreme emotions of a “chickenhawk” in constant danger.
Robert Mason enlisted in the army in 1964 and flew more than 1,000 helicopter combat missions before being discharged in 1968.
[Chickenhawk]’s vertical plunge into the thickets of madness will stun readers.
(Time)Mason’s gripping memoir… proves again that reality is more interesting, and often more terrifying, than fiction.
(Los Angeles Times)Very simply the best book so far out of Vietnam.
(St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
