One of the greatest of the Vietnam War memoirs, Chickenhawk absolutely covers the joy of flight, the terror of combat, and the insanity of Vietnam as a whole. Robert Mason always wanted to fly, and the Army would give him a helicopter in exchange for a little stint in the Air Cav. Of course, nothing is easy, and that tour meant a year of heat, mud, mortars, whorehouses, hot LZ and crazy officers. It's hard to say what I love more: descriptions of the crazy tricks used to push a Huey to its limits and beyond, brief encounters with a Vietnamese way of life as yet unspoiled by war, or Mason's slow descent into a nervous breakdown, brought on by too many 10 hour flying days dodging tracers. In many ways, Vietnam was a helicopter pilots' war, and this is their book.