Guts 'N Gunships: What It Was Really Like to Fly Combat Helicopters in Vietnam
By: Mark Garrison / Narrated By: Eric Martin
Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
Awesome book with yet more heroes!
Vietnam wound up being a very long, long war. And I’m grateful that, through listening to the many and varied audiobooks here for 2020’s Vietnam War Remembrance Day, I’ve had a chance to hear stories from individuals who served during several different legs of such a long war. From Regular Army 1965, to Recon 1970, and here in Guts ‘N Gunships, we have author Mark Garrison’s tour as a gunship pilot after training in 1967.
Garrison had to drop out of college, leaving him vulnerable. To avoid being destined for a quick life and early death in a very dangerous placement, he opted to learn how to fly helicopters. The book, somewhat hilariously, chronicles his time in school, where there was a fair amount of jocular camaraderie and most CERtainly pranks and youthful hijinks. And then it goes to his actual deployment to Vietnam and some of the friends he flew with, and many of the hellish missions he undertook.
I believe this is my second Eric Martin narration to review? And when I checked my Library, I was surprised to discover that I have ooooodles of other audiobooks where he does the narration honors. He’s not my favorite (I felt he could’ve done more in Vietnam: There & Back. In that fanTAStic book, it seemed that I had to glean a lot of the emotional impact through the text and the words written, rather than through the conveyance of any emotion resonance as narrated), but here he doesn’t do too poorly. Maybe it’s cuz this is, at times, a lighter book (Tho’ it does indeed get PLENTY tense at times, there are still whole sections devoted to the more relaxed sides of the men flying and fighting). So anyway: Not too bad, Mr. Martin, sir!
Okay, now that I’ve intimated that this is one of the lighter listens of Vietnam books, lemme totally backtrack and eat my words as I tell you that what situations are in the book are indeed heartstopping and edge of your seat nail biters. You’re never sure which pilots and crews are going to survive, and you’re never sure just how much of the job they’re going to get done given “hot” Landing Zones, and possible mechanical failures. There’s one hairy engagement that stands out in my mind, one that took forEVER to resolve, but it was sooo incredibly moving when the pilots really had a chance to see how much of a difference they made for troops on the ground.
Then too, there’s one god awfully horrible memory of a pilot firing a rocket which, through mechanical malfunction, goes terribly awry and kills seven men on the ground. It’s every pilot’s nightmare, and Garrison has no words of comfort for the pilot—he just doesn’t know what to say to help the pilot learn to live with the grim reality, what will be a nightmare for him till the end of time.
As it would happen, the book’s biggest Feel Good Moment wound up making me cry, wouldn’t ya know. As in other Vietnam books, the chopper pilots discuss the rightness, the wrongness of the war. And they come to realize that, right or wrong, none of it matters. They’re stuck; they’re there. And as God is their witness, the rest of however long they live and breathe will be devoted to getting their fellow pilot/crew back to the World safe, will be devoted to getting those poor SOBs fighting and struggling on the ground back to the World safe. What a noble way to think. Instead of being brought low by the futility of it all, they turn to each other, devoted for the safety of others. So yeh, sniffle sniffle sniffle.
A great, great book with good, solid writing and a hero to root for. I loved the Epilogue as I did truly come to love the men that Garrison flew with. I hadn’t been too familiar with the war as seen through the eyes of a chopper pilot, so this was a good one to start with. Plenty to make you tense.
Plenty to make you smile.
And most certainly: Plenty to make you proud…!
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