"Rules of Engagement" tells the story of an heroic fighter-driver flying Phantom jets during the Vuetnam air war. Brad Austin, an Annapolis grad and the latest in a long line of loyal US servicemen broke with tradition when he joined the Marines instead of following his fathers into the Navy. Over Vietnam, he chafes at the politically-initiated, and overly restrictive rules of engagement ("ROE"), watching enemy pilots pick off US fliers while shielding themselves behind the ROE. One of the best aviators in the Marines, he flies his way and barely stays within the ROE as he targets an enemy ace responsible for the deaths of many US fliers. Soon fed up, he plots one illegal flight which will clearly go over the line.

WHY THIS IS THE WORST BOOK ON THE VN AIR WAR: I gave this novel the benefit of the doubt, even though it quickly proved itself to be no better than an over-glorified and under-inspired rip-off of the far superior "Flight of the Intruder". The more enjoyable characters and irony of that other book made it the best novel of its genre. "Rules" goes wrong where "Intruder" got it right, taking a heavy-handed stand on the ROE (they deserve their bad rap, but Steve Coonts wasn't afraid to see the issue from both sides), while not going into great depth about the mechanics of his hero's machine of choice - the F-4. Next to Jake Grafton, Brad Austin is as lively as an action figure - Weber unwilling to give him any of the flaws or introspection that made Jake Grafton so believable, while Austin's back-seater remains a captive passenger and nowhere near the equal of "Tiger" Cole. Even the promising idea of having Austin romance the daughter of an anti-war fixture goes nowhere. (I kept waiting for the unhappy dad to tell Austin how he disapproves of his daughter's dating a guy who may get shot down, leaving the poor girl to wonder for years whether he was dead or rotting in a tiger-cage.) Instead, Weber loads us down with details that don't do anything to substantiate the plot. Austin is a maverick of his family because he chose to fly for the Marines instead of the Navy, a plot twist that's supposed to establish him as a rebel, even though it has him flying the same planes from Navy ships like a Naval Aviator, and facing much of the same challenges. Even the climactic flight, the one that will break the rules, is a cheat. While books like these don't mind chiding wartime planners for choosing a strategy that has nothing to do with winning the war, "Rules" easily settles on an epic dogfight against the shadowy Communist ace, one whose result won't have the least effect down on the ground where the war was grinding its way through an entire generation of 19 year olders. Coonts at least chose a target his characters felt was attached to the war's larger purpose (the Communist party HQ) and didn't mind using a plane a whole lot less sexy than the F-4's in "Rules". If you must read a Weber novel, read the sequel: "Target of Opportunity", also an uninspired novel, but one with amore original plot.

While the obvious knowledge and attention to detail given to the writing of "Rules of Engagement" is admirable, there were several patterns that lessened the enjoyment for the reader.

It's clear the author has ample experience with flying, Navy jargon, and the military life. His careful descriptions allow the reader an interesting glimpse at the day to day life on an aircraft carrier. At the same time, this precision and careful wordcraft enters into the dialog, with not nearly so positive a result. With declaratives like "The colonel is a nice guy, and we had a cordial chat.", the reader finds great difficulty empathizing with and believing in the characters in the book.

Similarly, the expected intimate discussions between the protagonist and his love interest come across as stilted, formal, and difficult to comprehend. While seeing things from a female perspective is technically beyond this reviewer's experience, it seems that the attitude and reactions of said amorous companion occasionally depart farther from reality than could be easily accepted. For example, it seems she (and perhaps the author) is more concerned about our hero's perception of her father than his attitude and intentions toward her.

The least disturbing of these oddities is the slight tendency the author has to telegraph impending disaster. While not tragic, and probably not universally noticable, this reviewer occasionally felt mild disappointment that the surprise had been blunted by some sort of narrative drift that foreshadowed the events.

All that being said, "Rules of Engagement" has many things that can captivate the reader. The combat descriptions are excellent and exciting, and the plot developments keep the story flowing. Also, while the writing tends to be politically heavy-handed, it is not hard to sympathize with the pilots who put their lives at risk for trivial or non-existent strategic gain.

If you find enjoyment in cleverly written dialog and deep character development, you might steer clear of this one. On the other hand, if you like detailed aerial combat descriptions and realistic narrative of Vietnam era tactical operations, you'll find much to enjoy in "Rules of Engagement".

I have now read all the Joe Weber novels but one (Honorable Enemies) which I start next. Rules of Engagement was just was well written as all his other books. Growing up in that era, for me, it was interesting to understand what was happening "behind the scenes" of the VietNam war. Great characters, great plots, and some interesting twists are all typical Joe Weber. Keep up the good work.

I read this book for a school project. I had to learn about the culture in Vietnam. The book went into great detail about the culture and the way people live there. It told true stories about the people who went through the war. Great book for young readers who want to know about the war.

This book is great for adults too. It takes quotes and information from several books written for adult audiences and uses them to augment and develop the history of American involvement in Vietnam. Many books on the Vietnam War are so confusing I can't understand what happened. This book was clear, succient and introduced the opinions of people who were involved in the war. I came away from reading this with a better understanding and it was even more important now that we have gone into Iraq.

For a history book, this was really good! I thought the quotations were well chosen and the bok as a whole was engaging and made me want to read more. It leaves a lot of questions, but for interesting and the Vietnam War, you can't do much better!

This author shows an incredible lack of knowledge about the Vietnamese (both ARVN and Nva/Vc troops) who fought at Hue. This lack of knowledge means that the readers have no clue of how bloody the battle Hue was and why it takes several weeks to regain the city.

According two recently publish Communist books: "Hue, Spring 1968, Ban Nghien Cuu Dang[the Communist Party Research committee], Hue, 1988" and the "Tck-tkn [Generl offensive-General Uprising 1968, Ban Nghien Cuu Dang[the Communist Party Research committee], Ho Chi Minh City, 1988". The Nva/Vc troops in Hue consist of 4 full strength regiments: the E1, E5, E8, E9 and several battalions from the E6 regiment several sapper battalions (E is the NVA denote for regiment). Only the South Viets Hac Bao Company, most of who during the New Year was on leave, defended Hue. The Nva attacked on the first day of the Lunar New Year and quickly gain control of the city. After which they release 2,300 violent criminals from the city prison and armed them and the city VC sympathizers to form the "Nghia Quan"[Rightous Army]. In total the Nva/VC have around 9,000 to 10,000 troops in the city including the "Nghia Quan' criminals. On the second day of the New Year, the ARVN 1st Airborne Brigade consists of the 2nd and 6th battalions fought their way into Hue by way of An Hoa. They succeeded in getting into the city and later the ARVN 9th Airborne battalions; fresh from their victory at Quang tri also joined them. It's true that the S. Viets ask the Americans for help after the second week of battle but it was not due to S. Viets troops cowardice or low morale like the author tries to imply.

The ARVN who fought at Hue consists of the Airborne, then later the Marines, Rangers and the 1st Division, the best fighting force in Vietnam war. However, initially, the S. Viets leaders do not want the ncient city of Hue to be destroyed and forces the S. Viets and Americans to fight with little or no air and artillery support. This means the cost in retaking the city from 8,000 well-fortified enemies has to be done hand to hand. During the week of the battle, the S. Vietnamese 2nd and 7th battalions went from 500 men each down to only 200 men. The S. Viets 9th airborne battalion went from 400 men to only 100 men, the rest were killed and wounded. The S. Viets marines and ranger battalions that later came to join in the fight was fresh from the battles in Saigon without replacement and were all at or around half strengths. A typical S. Viet airborne battalion consists of 500 men, 800 men for the Vietnamese marine battalion and 450 men for the Vietnamese ranger battalion. The Nva/VC also lost a tremendous number of men and o both sides settle down to defensive and probing attacks. This also is true for the USMC since the US marines for the first two weeks or so, fought only during the day and then retreat to the MACV compound at night, this go on until sufficient troops and allies replacement have arrive. The battle for Hue was bloody and vicious, the S. Viet dead was twice that of the U.S marines, as for the Nva/VC most of their troops die during the battle for the city.

I have not read the whole book as of yet. What I read for the time period during 1967 was very lacking on some major items. I feel that the author is only using military info based upon large scale "named" USMC Operations and not very important info concerning activities that had the same impact without having a "name". A good example was what happened to Fox Co. 2/5 on July 4, 1967 when they were overrun at Nong Son, or as we referred to that place as the "Coal Mines". A young machine gunner that came as a replacement to Fox Co. due to the high KIA rate that happened to them on Operation II on June 2, 1967. This man won the Congressional Medal of Honor and was in country for less than a month. This only one of several examples that I can attest to. Thank you.

This book filled in the blanks and answered questions I had about the big picture. I was in Kilo, 3/5 1st Division in An Hoa. I only saw microcosm of our activity. I had no idea of the "big picture" I want to talk to author about more in depth details. Great book.-Lynn Underwood

An "ontological account of Empire" is based on a theoretical paradigm that is bankrupt in terms of its potential for political insight. What must we believe about the theory-praxis relation before we can follow Spanos in reading the history of Western imperialism through the lense of Heidegger's ontological difference? We must believe that political history unfolds as a series of discrete "ontic structures" that owe their existence (and their imperialistic drive) to the "forgetting" of an original indebtedness to some unfathomable power of Being, whatever that may be. The only source of critical insight vis-a-vis such broad categories as "liberal humanism" is the Heidegger-patented flight into obscurity, the forfeiting of all empirical and theoretical analysis (easily dismissed as "humanist" and relegated to the wastebins of "ontotheology") in deference to the ontological "dispensation" of Being (Habermas's phrase). The implicit assumption, of course, is that ALL political programs are equally guilty of the humanist sin and are therefore equally deserving of smoke-and-mirrors "de-structuration." Spanos sees Heidegger's de-structive hermeneutics as the only hope for political salvation, and as a consequence he flattens out the socio-political (ontic) side of the ontological difference under the assumption that "structure" is an intrinsically bad thing, or, more to the point, that "structure" can only be understood in the kind of dualistic model that underwrites Heideggerian "critique." The question for Spanos would be, what kind of politics suggests itself after we have uncritically assumed this Heideggerian framework? There's nothing to be said here--this should make us skeptical.

Spanos's analysis of the ethico-ontological dynamics at work in the
Vietnam War is certainly interesting and fairly persuasive, but it's
kind of useless. Spanos's general aim is to counter the liberal
humanist claim that Heidegger's Nazism destroys his credibility; he
does this by making a really big deal about the consistency of liberal
values with the Vietnam War.

Strictly speaking, I'd say Spanos has
some good points. He demonstrates some remarkable similarities between
the "benign" post-Cold War discourse of development and
democracy and the discourse of the Vietnam War. Spanos shows how the
notion that the only good Vietnam is a capitalist Vietnam cloaked the
War in a veil of moral necessity, and ultimately justified the massive
violence that was waged against the Vietnamese people.

But we
already knew that. What Spanos tries to do is pretend that this has
some radical implications that it really doesn't. First, he tries to
show that the Vietnam War demonstrates that the traditional veridical
understanding of truth is informed by some violent
will-to-power. Here, he miserably fails. While he treats Heidegger's
thought like a toolbox (with some useful tools and some less useful
tools) he insists on totalizing the history of Western thought into
one monolithic "ontotheological tradition" and then tries to
attribute all that is bad in the world to that tradition. The argument
he's making is pretty dumb, but he hides this by writing in
posthumanist blither in order to try to sound smart.

If you haven't
read Foucault, Derrida, and Heidegger fairly extensively (having read
some Spanos would also help), this book will totally go over your
head. Spanos is probably the worst writer there is. He speaks in the
technical vocabulary of post-Heideggerian philosophers and then backs
up his points with long block quotes that often do little to back up
his argument. The crux of his argument consists of one sentence in
which he explains the link between veridical discourse and
technological thinking, and it's a horrible disappointment. He spends
the entire book continually asserting that the Vietnam War was a
logical extension of liberal humanist values without really backing up
this claim.

I think Rorty is right and Spanos is wrong (although
Spanos claims that his work proves that Rorty's philosophy is too
short-sighted). If we take an antiessentialist view of the
ontotheological tradition (a view that Spanos was kind of enough to
take of Heidegger) we can see why certain liberal distinctions like
those between hard power and soft power would rescue liberalism from
Spanos's critique. Rorty realizes this, but Spanos is too caught up in
his own rhetoric to make the same realization.

For people trying to
better their knowledge of Foucault, don't look here. I personally
don't think Spanos ever read Foucault's analysis of the repressive
hypothesis, and I don't think Spanos tells us much about Foucault's
project that Foucault didn't already tell us himself. I guess this
book is OK as an extension of some of Heidegger's thought, but it's
pretty weak.

Spanos's book is really really ambitious, but it's kind
of stupid, honestly. I think Spanos should take a moment to reflect on
his thesis and see if he really thinks that the Vietnam War was a
really an ontological faceoff between the 'ontotheological tradition'
and the 'spectral obscurity of Nothing.'

There are some good
thoughts on Western literature. Read it if you like deconstruction. I
guess that's about all I can say.

This is an excellent exploration and critique (in the real sense of that word) of the epistemology and discourse of empire. Persuasively argues for the "family resemblance" b/w romanesque notions and practice of empire/imperialism, the war on Vietnam, and current mantras about democracy and freedom. Compares very favorably to the much ballyhoo'd hardt-negri tome on "Empire". Not an easy read, of course, but the complexity of the problem Spanos addresses warrants it.

The book is written by a respected US Gov Official. He has nothing to gain from writing this book but the contentment of disseminating the reality of US involvement in the middle east. Since writing the book, he has been chastised for being unpatriotic and even anti-semitic - all these reaction being confirmations of guilt. There is little subjectivity in this book - in fact it is not invigorating. Rather, Clark works through hard fact, in an appropriate level of detail, to describe just how misled the general public can be about war, and the incredible effects of sensationalist media and gov propaganda on the collective opinion. Read It.

Since the British lost their grip on the Middle-East, the U.S. have taken over. Mr. Clark very accurately describes how the role of the U.S. during the Gulf war fits into the bigger picture of how the U.S. have tried (and succeeded) for decades to remain the world's number one power. At first, I only wanted to read the book because I had some little doubts about the objectivity of the information that we received via the media. On the whole, I agreed that action was needed, and that the war against Iraq could not be avoided. Until I read this book...It was like shells fell from my eyes. I realise now that not only there was a lot more violence used against Iraq than we were told, and that the purpose of this war was not to get Iraq out of Kuwait (which was indeed the 19th province of Iraq before England "created" Kuwait out of it in 1922), but to cripple an entire nation for decades to come. But also that this war was carefully planned by the U.S. for years. Mr. Clark shows this with countless examples, that make you say to yourself: "yes, I always had doubts about that". One of them is that although the CIA was already aware for sixth months that during the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq used poison gas against the kurds in the North of Iraq, it never revealled this information to the press until after the Iran-Iraq ceasefire in 1988, 3 hours before an Iraqi delegate arrived in the U.S. and gave a press conference. This delegate was rather taken by surprise by the questions he got at this press-conference. I can hardly exagerate the need for everybody to read this book, and learn what price the Iraqi people had to pay to secure U.S. access to cheap oil...that's what bothers me most: this war was not about democracy or human rights, it was about money and power only. And by the way: all this talk about U.S. attempts to eliminate Mr. Hussein is, of course, nonsense. The U.S. still need him in the saddle because he gives the U.S. the excuse for presence in the Gulf and maintaining the economic sanctions. READ THIS BOOK!!! And see, among other things, that not only the Iraqi people were informed very subjectively by their media. We were also by ours.

An excellent book, throughly footnoted and straight forward. Don't pay any attention to the previous reviewer who comes of as some sawed off war hack who hasn't even read the book to start with.Since he doesnt agree with Clark, he resorts to character assassination of this great man..shows the mindset of "if you're not with me, you're against me." Clark does an excellent job in exposing the US for its terror campaign in the Middle East, not just the Iraq affair. If you have open mind and a consciousness and persistance for the facts, this book is for you...if not, than keep away from this book as it may cause problems to your "patriotic" brainwashed mindset.

This old book is full of myth and propaganda that you have to wonder why the publisher actually charge money for the book, I usually get these type of books for free when I was still living in Vietnam.

The book portrait the Americans as killers, it portrait all the S. Vietnamese as corrupt and whores - typical leftist stereotypes. What the book does not tell you is that the North Vietnamese were the biggest whores and most corrupt government in the world. On January 28,2002 L'express- the French leftist newspaper publish an article by Sylvaine Pasquier(go to lexpress.fr to see the full article), showing that in 1958 the North Vietnamese Communist gave the Spratley and Pearl islands off the coast of South Vietnam and near the Phillipines to China in exchange for Chinese support for the war. Also, in 1999 and 2000, the Vietnamese Communist sign a series of treaties giving China over 13,000 square Kilometers of land in North Vietnam and islands off South Vietnamin exchange for China support against a growing democracy movement in Vietnam. Yes, money to foreign government in exchange for help against the Vietnamese people. Never in the 5000 years history of Vietnam did this happen. Vietnam is a small country to give away thousands of square miles to another country so that they will have you retain absolute power is unforgivable. If Bush gave away 4000 square miles of land to Canada in exchange for campaign contribution, what would Americans think?

This is by far the best book ever published on the Vietnam War. Out of print for thirty years, it is finally back on the bookshelves, much to the chagrin of the militarists in Washington. It's the only book that completely expains the disaster of what happened in Vietnam. It should be required reading in every school and college in this country.

Read the words and learn. Look at the pictures and cry!

Our country must never repeat this.

From the summer of 1966 through the fall of 1968, I was fighting in some of the same areas of Vietnam that Phillip Jones Griffiths so dramatically photographed. The pictures in his book are a jolting reminder of that experience.
No other book, by a single photographer, comes as close to capturing what Vietnam was like as this does.
He has produced a powerful, informative and compassionate work of photojournalism, that is as immediate today as when it was orignally published.

Unlike most Vitenam books, America's Longest War chooses to examine the diplomacy element of the war instead of the typical military aspects of the conflict. I was assigned this as a textbook in my Vietnam War class in college and was surprised by the lack of military coverage in it. About two chapters into ALW, I realized that Herring was concentrating on what happened behind closed doors during the war and then it became more easy to understand. Herring also introduces the reader to the movers and shakers of the war and their reasoning behind their decisions. He also starts back with Truman's administration in dealing with French Indo-China and you get the story from the very beginning. Other books typically gloss over Truman and Ike and like to start in LBJ's administration.

Herring also informs the reader that contrary to the current popular opinion, JFK was NOT going to get out of Vietnam because he chose to let the aggressive Henry Cabot Lodge make key decisions in escalating the United States' involvement in South Vietnam. The reader begins to understand that the US lost the war in the diplomatic and political theaters and not on the battlefield. After all, the US military's job was to keep communists from taking over South Vietnam and while US troops were deployed in the country, that objective never happened.

I highly recommend this book to anybody interested in the Vietnam conflict. Although there is no coverage on military engagements, troop life, or popular battles like Khe Sanh and Dienbienphu, this book will give the reader answers on why we were there and who was making the decisions on what we did in Southeast Asia.

I read the first edition of this book (published 1979). This is an excellent introduction into the Vietnam War. The book does focus on the politics and policies of the United States rather than more palatable topics such as the human stories of the war. The book gives a firm background into the years preceding American involvment in Vietnam. The first edition needed the perspective of communist sources to make it a more well rounded work, but of course at the time that was near impossible. A good book for anyone interested in a general history of the Vietnam war.

For anyone interested in a basic understanding of the politics and diplomacy of the Vietnam War, this is the place to start. It is widely used in college classes around the country. The style is very readable, and the book includes useful maps and an excellent bibliographic essay for further reading.

The book has a lot of grammatical and spelling errors in it, but it doesn't take much away from the book. The maps and drawings are excellent. My favorite chapters are the ones about the 160th SOAR. Too bad this book didn't have stories from Afghanistan. Oh well, if you are interested in military aviation or special operations, then you should definitely check this one out.

First the BAD; the authors commissioned a superb painter to render battle scenes, however for 1983 Grenada they fed him wrong information as he depicts marines running out of CH-46E helicopters wearing Kevlar helmets and M249 light machine guns when only the 82nd Airborne Division Paratroops wore the new "fritz" helmets during Operation Urgent Fury, the M249 "SAW" wasn't even in U.S. service until 1985 and it was U.S. Army Rangers who deployed from the CH-46Es to rescue the medical students at the Grand Anse campus (errors also on pages 194-195). The painting looks like a bad rip-off of Navy artist Mike Leahy's depiction of the 1983 invasion. It even has a marine firing a M72 LAW rocket with backblast ready to fry some other marines running out of the "frog" helicopter. A bunch of fantasy.

The GOOD is that the book does show how helicopters have been shot down/destroyed when they are unarmored like marine AH-1 Cobras were in Grenada (and still are today) or when they try to do something stupid like land in broad daylight on an enemy-held beach like marines directed USAF HH-53s to do on Koh Tang island in 1975 or when a marine pilot flew into a fuel-laden EC-130 at Desert One in 1980. The book also shows promise for the future with the AVPRO EXINT people pods which could make the useless for Close Air Support marine AV-8B Harrier II vertical take-off/landing jet (needs running take-off to carry decent bombload, burns fuel too fast to remain overhead to support friendly troops, fuel tanks and exhaust nozzles co-located, unarmored) play a vital role in downed pilot rescues---since the longer the delay, the more enemy troops converge around the man (or men) in jeopardy.

The book in the futures section is reminiscent of General David Grange's "Air-Mech-Strike" study group proposals since it depicts possible new rotary-wing V/STOL aircraft designs to get higher speeds like the stopped "X" rotor and canard wing.

If you read the book with a sharp eye to pinpoint factual errors there is more good here than there is bad to lead you astray; perhaps those that take V/STOL aircraft into combat with intelligence (not hubris) and unpredictable plans are not "damned" after all?

This is a great book about special operations, and their behind-the-scenes people, like the people who get the special forces in and out. The book describes in detail, the planning, and execution of real life helicopter special operations with detailed maps, and dramatic pictures

Welcome to the original SEALs where author James Watson could be expected to break all Ten Commandments in order to get the job done. PROVIDED THE JOB IS DRINKING! In all the other Special Forces books I read with amazement how Force Recon Marines, Snipers, Delta Force and Rangers spent up to a week in the jungle gathering intel while avoiding not only booby-traps, ambush and detection from the enemy but tigers and leopards. Watson's idea of a mission in Vietnam was going out for 2 hours in Levi's blue jeans then getting back to base to get drunk before dark. Basically "Charlie" had very little fear of this alcoholic with a green face. He once looked so exhausted his superior suggested he stay in while his men go on patrol. Was he overworked? Obviously not as his men weren't. He was exhasted from spending all his free time drinking rather than resting or sleeping. So when they came to tell him his men were under fire guess where he was? In the bar getting drunk of course. I have the utmost respect and gratitude for those who served with pride in the Vietnam War because preserving freedom is always a just cause. Unfortunately that cause never occurred to shoot-first-Watson who killed a newborn baby at its mother's breast with a shotgun then blamed the enemy for bringing his family to a war. Whose country did he think it was? Watson was far too busy lying to superiors, stealing from anyone and cheating to increase rate (rank) to do any recon for his "missions."

I have read over a dozen books on Special Forces (all nonfiction) and James Watson's two books: Walking Point and Point Man were by far the worst. Forcing myself to finish this diatribe was far more painful than any training Watson endured to become a SEAL back in the days when you smoked between sneaking out of exercises. Basically it's a self-serving story profiling how chronic alcoholism increases delusions of grandeur and the self-glorification of an undisciplined wannabe tough guy. Not only was James Watson an unprofessional soldier but he tends to brag about it. A real man doesn't sucker punch a fellow soldier in a bar then give himself a pat on the back.

...

Chief Watson does a very good job giving the readers some insight to what the Vietnam war was like to Navy SEALs. I found that many parts of this book are very much like Richard Marcinko's Rogue Warrior. I learned many things about the Navy SEALs and their techniques from reading this book, granted they were techniques from over 30 years ago. I commend authors like Watson who give the public a glimpse of what their world looked like in war times.

with all due respect reader from miniapolis, u are wrong in everything u said. Chief Watson is a great SEAL...after successful ops SEALs always went to a bar to party and bond...its called UNIT INTEGRETY...after enough partying all SEALs within a unit should be able to finish each other sentences and trust each other with their lives (which they may have to sometime). And the way u put it is that Chief Watson sucker punched the guy for no reason...well if u read the book, the Chief was a guest in the O Club and some other chief (also a guest) came over to one of Watson's superior officers (a LT) and said "Your one of those Loud mouth SEALS arent you?" and then Watson even asked the LT's permission before punching him...then when the XO escorted him out he told Watson that he would have loved for him to stay but it would make him look bad...so in conclusion until u have gone to war and been out in the jungle with someone trying to kill you, or until u have had all of ur body messed up by a mine then please dont go badmouthing a war hero...thank you

The Aviators was my first exposure to Griffin and what a disappointment! I had been led to believe that Griffin's novels were action packed, battle filled and that Griffin was a latter day Forester or MacLean. Perhaps he is in other novels but this one proceeded like a made-for-TV prime time soap.

The action starts in Vietnam in 1963. Our hero is wounded in a bungled operation and returns to the U.S. to become an aide-de-camp for one year. During the year and change he distinguishes himself and falls for the widow of a friend. He and his CO also must establish the viability of airmobile infantry, demonstrating that army helicopter pilots can transfer large units. There is little action and the story line is predictable. Subplots are predictable as well.

In fairness to Griffin, I listened to an abridged audiotape and it might have been poorly abridged. However, I didn't get the sense that there was an awful lot here to begin with. Gerald McRaney's clipped reading doesn't help it either.

This is a weak series of books, as far as war novels go. They're more like an ongoing soap opera than gritty war drama (think "General Hospital" as a novel, only set between 1945-1970 and revolving around the Army instead of Port Charles.) The characters are given plenty of time to evolve, and some do (Lowell, in particular.) But it all seems too phony. A good war novel should have some truth in it, but it is in short supply with these books.

Like all WEB GRiffin's books, this one combines humor, personality studies, and adventure. I wish I had the whole series. He is great.