Peter Barr Henry

Hard Chargers from the Sky: a Passage Through the Vietnam War (6 1/2 Ton Guns Dropped into Battle) Peter Barr Henry 1st edition

Lieutenant Ryan "Rye" Enders arrives in Vietnam unassigned and selects a rear support First Cavalry artillery unit. He's dead wrong.

Armchair generals in Washington have devised an experiment, to drop his 6 1/2 ton guns and 127 men on the North Viet Army?a desperate gamble to win the war. Each mission from the sky has less chance of survival as Rye lifts his battery into brutal battles against the NVA, Russian tanks and artillery.

His guns destroy Hue during Tet, and then take-on troops, artillery, and tanks in Khe Sanh. He arrives on the abandoned marine base under fire and saves men left behind becoming the last American standing. Three weeks to departing, he airlifts two guns and twenty-seven men into the "Valley of Death"; a suicide mission. Will they make it out?

He and a triage nurse find love as "damaged goods".

Under Attack from his own air force, exposed to Agent Orange, he must reconcile the killer he's become and the futility of war.

The dialog and actions are real, experienced by the author in Vietnam, September 1967-8.

Hard Chargers from the Sky deals with one of the riskiest?and craziest?airmobile artillery operations in military history.