Wings of the Eagle is a practically day-by-day account of Grant's tour as a Huey pilot in Vietnam from March 1968 to March 1969. It starts slow, hanging around Da Nang flying VIPs and C-rations to nearby units, but a month in Grant was reassigned to the "Kingsmen" 17th Assault Helicopter Company, and found his calling as a Long Range Patrol pilot. LRPs were small teams insert deep into the jungle (and even Laos) to gather intelligence, and use sudden and overwhelming firepower to take on Viet Cong units. LRPs were constantly in trouble, and when they needed extraction it was always an urgent call from a hot LZ.

The heart of this book is flying and drinking, drinking and getting into trouble with officers, flying some more, drinking a lot more. Grant's day-by-day countdown is a perfect look into how people lived their tours, '364 days and a wake-up'. This isn't the definitive account of the helicopter pilots war, that'd be Mason's Chickenhawk, but it is a damn good memoir.