A Modern Classic that's destined to be Immortal
For the effect of a very close-up and personal war upon an aviator and the resultant descent into his own personal hell, Chickenhawk by Viet chopper driver Robert Mason has got to be a modern classic.
For those who may have wondered what a helicopter pilot's life in Vietnam was like, it's a "must read".
Imagine sitting there in your anti-ballistic helmet, chicken-plate and flak jacket, with your 9mm/45 slewed around and down over the family jewels, sliding armour-plate slid forward, the sound of four M60's chattering away, and looking forward through the splintered windscreen at the dust being kicked up by the machine-gunner in the tree-line who's trading tracer with your crewman. You desperately want to pull pitch but you know you can't - not until the SAS/LRRP patrol makes it into the pad and gets aboard.
You saw the same sight picture two days previous, and you know that if you survive, you'll probably see it again a little later that week - or maybe as early as tomorrow. The unrelenting trauma of that sort of consistent pressure eventually drove Mason mad.... and he had a long road back.