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Summary
Summary
Unlike other branches of the military, the Marine Corps required its combat pilots in Vietnam to spend time doing forward air control duty on the ground, with the troops on the front lines. For Sam Brantley it was a harsh and horrific lesson in the realities of jungle combat. The war had always been somewhat distant, flying thousands of feet above the trees and rice paddies. Now, during the summer of the Tet Offensive, the war was in his face and what he saw -- and did -- changed his life forever.
Reviews (1)
Booklist Review
A small press in Oregon produces a Vietnam War memoir of great value. Brantley, aviation-struck in the 1950s, became a marine aviator in the '60s. He flew A-4 Skyhawks over South Vietnam in peace and war, then served as a forward observer for tactical strikes. That involved working with a marine rifle battalion and going out with them at the ungodly hours of the morning that give the book its title. After the war, Brantley left the military, but the war did not leave him. He vividly describes the price of being a square peg in a round hole when everybody is trying to forget the war and at worst trash and at least ignore the men who fought it. Although the A-4 is still, nearly 50 years after its first flight, in service in a surprising number of air forces, very little has been written about it. Nor have marine forward observers in Vietnam gotten much attention. Both the historical and the autobiographical material in it recommend this superior book. --Roland Green
Table of Contents
| Foreword | p. vii |
| Preface | p. xi |
| 1. Position | p. 1 |
| 2. Winter Wonder | p. 9 |
| 3. High Places | p. 17 |
| 4. Forty-Foot Platform | p. 31 |
| 5. December | p. 39 |
| 6. Serpent | p. 52 |
| 7. Mileage | p. 56 |
| 8. Streamers | p. 63 |
| 9. Doppio | p. 74 |
| 10. Sterling | p. 78 |
| 11. Utopee Yah | p. 85 |
| 12. On One | p. 94 |
| 13. Academy of the Elite | p. 110 |
| 14. Converter | p. 115 |
| 15. Privileged View | p. 120 |
| 16. Divert | p. 130 |
| 17. Shuffle | p. 138 |
| 18. Matter of Time | p. 145 |
| 19. Sheathed | p. 151 |
| 20. Little Sister | p. 159 |
| 21. Reinsert | p. 165 |
| 22. Say You Are | p. 173 |
| 23. Every So Often | p. 175 |
| 24. Pools | p. 186 |
| 25. Unwrap | p. 193 |
| 26. X Tahsee | p. 205 |
| 27. Owtov Mined | p. 215 |
| 28. Fifth Figure | p. 223 |
| 29. Fashe On | p. 227 |
| Postscript: Black Granite Registry | p. 234 |
| Glossary | p. 239 |