A friend of ours, who was a USMC helicopter pilot in Vietnam, has just released his new book (supposedly in the making for 45 years). I’m keen on history but not a big fan of novels and Ken’s hybrid fact/fiction story telling in the past has usually left me disinterested, but he gave us a chapbook a couple years back gleaned from the work-in-progress and I thought it was pretty good. I’m especially looking forward to reading it because he flew helicopters in Nam at the same time my dad did – 1963.
Mike,
I love to read anything historical, this book sounds like it may be an "aerial" perspective of Karl Marlantes’s novel, “Matterhorn,”, also about Viet Nam but a ground view. That was a great read. I've put "Who shot the water buffalo" on my to do list. Thanks for the heads up!
Have a good Sunday!
Fl/Ga – I hope it’s a good book and that you enjoy it. The only Vietnam war book I’ve read was Chickenhawk by Robert Mason. Since my dad never spoke about Vietnam I thought Chickenhawk would help me understand what he went through. The part that stuck with me the most was where Mason talked about landing his Huey in a shallow stream after doing medavac flights in order to more easily wash the blood and gore out of the back. That may have explained some things about my old man...
I don't know who shot the Water Buffalo, but I know who shot the Tiger.
Oh yeh, well, "I shot the Sheriff, but I did not shoot the Deputy"
> Oh yeh, well, "I shot the Sheriff, but I did not shoot the Deputy"
Actually, I was not joking.
Much cheaper to pay for a dead human, be it man, woman or child, than to pay off the killing of a water buffalo. They were more valuable, kind of a hard thing to understand, but the world does not always look at things as most in this country want to, and what we seem to usually want, has nothing to do with reality. My only experience with a buffalo was after being told to kill a human running around in a free fire zone, made a good shot. Next morning there was a san-pan alongside with the body, turns out to be a 14 year old boy who was out looking for his water buffalo that had wandered off, wanted to use that buffalo to plow a rice paddy to get it ready to seed. That is how I found out the value difference between a man and buffalo.
jud
