My War with Vietnam

A Pilot's Healing Journey Home From War


“My War with Vietnam: A Pilot’s Healing Journey Home from War is an honest, deeply moving book about war and life after war. As an archaeologist who studies war, I often encounter an echo of the past on empty battlefields and or in sunken warships. This book is no faint echo. It is an honest, personal narrative that anyone who has fought, or who thinks they want to fight should read. The journey home, both physical and emotional, is where most war books end. Not this one. I could not put it down, and I will remember it for the rest of my life.”

—James Delgado, PhD, RPA, senior vice president, exploration sector leader, SEARCH DC Station, author, co-author or editor of over 35 books as well as numerous articles and archeological reports covering a wide range of subjects related to the histories of shipwrecks


The expression “Fog of War” perfectly encapsulates what it was like to experience the Vietnam War first hand. This is an account of what it was like to be there, an account of what the war demanded of young American boys fighting, flying and dying in it. And life afterwards for me.


As an Army helicopter pilot there, I learned to become numb to all the carnage in combat, to stop feeling anything at all, to bury my own humanity and to find a dark place in my heart to fly the missions required in that war.


My second tour saw even more haunting revelations about that war as I became Aircraft Commander on Four Star General Abrams’ helicopter.


This book is a gripping memoir of a harrowing tour of duty and the healing that followed. The last few chapters tell of the unsolicited healing I received from strangers in seventeen countries I visited before going home. Their warmth, outstretched hands and open hearts reacquainted me with the wonderful gift of being human. So many gracious strangers helped me see I couldn’t, shouldn’t stay numb. My healing began. Due out at McFarland, Amazon and Barnes and Noble in February on Mcfarland



Purchase now at Macfarland Books

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