An Air Force officer's vigorous account of the Vietnam War.
Flanagan always dreamed of being a flier, and attending the Air
Force Academy in Colorado was everything he had hoped. It was
strict, the training was superb, and particularly appealing was the
honor code, whereby candidates were obliged always to tell the
truth. The honor code served Flanagan well in Vietnam, which he
volunteered for in 1966. Flanagan's memoir is not like Robert
Mason's in Chickenhawk (1983), where the naive young officer is
transformed into an embittered veteran questioning all wars.
Flanagan is a straight arrow to the end; he stayed in the Air Guard
after the war and eventually became a general. His job in Vietnam
was to fly close in with small aircraft, to report and coordinate
what he saw; sometimes, too, he had to don infantry gear and head
into the jungle. Many of his blow-by-blow accounts of battles are
drawn from notes, such as "Team 10 located a VC work party...the
Phantom 31 flight of three F-4s dropped 11 cans of 750-pound napalm
right on them." His tale of a combat helicopter assault into a hot
landing zone is harrowing indeed: scared pilots lifting up too
quickly, grunts dropping from several feet in the air, a helicopter
breaking apart. His descriptions of South Korean troops -
essentially mercenaries hired by the US, but fierce soldiers - are
unique among American firsthand accounts. Flanagan's reportage is
marred only by the sanitized speech of the soldiers: see James
Jones, or Larry Heinemann. Much later, Flanagan became involved in
the MIA cause, and yet he is never angry, only sorrowful. This is
the perspective of a veteran who feels we failed because of a lack
of resolve, that the news media distorted events or couldn't
understand them, that the antiwar movement meant well but was
wrong. Splendid tales of combat, but don't look here for what it
all meant. (Kirkus Reviews)
It is 1966, the war is escalating, and a young Air Force Academy
graduate's assignment is to patrol unfriendly territory with
six-man hunter-killer teams. As a Forward Air Controller, flying
single engine spotter planes, Flanagan is the link between
fighter-bomber pilots and ground forces. This autobiographical
account recreates the period when Flanagan, assigned to Project
Delta, was plunged into major operations in key combat areas.
Spectacular airstrikes, team rescues, lost men, thwarted attempts
to save comrades--all are recounted here with raw honesty. A
factual combat history from one man's perspective, this is also a
thoughtful look at the warrior values of bravery, honesty, and
integrity. Flanagan examines the influences that help build these
values--educational institutions, the military training system
(including the service academies), and religion--and reflects on
the high cost of abandoning them. In Vietnam Above the Treetops,
Flanagan traces his life from adolescence through the training
period, combat missions of all kinds, and re-entry into the
everyday world. His war tales take us to key regions: from the
Demilitarized Zone, south through the Central highlands, and into
War Zone C near Cambodia. Flanagan tells the absolute truth of his
experience in Vietnam-- call signs, bomb loads, and target
coordinates are all historically accurate. He offers observations
on the Vietnamese and Korean forces he worked with, comparing
Eastern and Western cultures, and he vents his frustrations with
the U.S. command structure. Determined to reconstruct the past,
Flanagan re-read old letters from Vietnam, examined maps,
deciphered pocket diaries, interviewed former comrades, and let his
own long-buried memories surface. Flanagan did not find this book
easy to write, but he wanted to pay tribute to his fellow warriors,
especially those still missing in action; he wanted to exorcise his
war nightmares and further understand his experience. Even more
important, he needed to communicate the values he and his comrades
lived by, in distant jungles where they faced some of the toughest
circumstances known to human beings.
General
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