Vietnam and the Long Road Home
Like millions of young American men, Gould was forced to make decisions he had never expected to face. On 3 May 1968, rather than wait for the draft to decide his future, he enlisted in the United States Army. He would go on to serve as a CH-47 Chinook pilot in Vietnam, an experience that would mark the rest of his life.
But this is not only a story about war. It is also a story about coming home and discovering that the home you left behind no longer exists in the same way. After Vietnam, Gould struggled to find his place in a country that seemed to have little room for returning veterans. University life was lonely. Employers were indifferent. The life he had imagined for himself felt suddenly out of reach.
So, he returned to the cockpit.
His search for direction took him from the skies over Iran with a Dutch flying company, to water bombing fires in the Sierra Nevada, and then west again to Indonesia, where he flew helicopters on Java and Irian Jaya. Along the way, he found other Vietnam veterans who were also trying to make sense of what they had survived, and what they had lost.
Reflective, honest, and deeply personal, Vietnam and the Long Road Home is the story of a Chinook pilot's war, but even more, it is the story of the long aftermath: the search for belonging, stability, and a way home after Vietnam. University life was lonely. Employers were indifferent. The life he had imagined for himself felt suddenly out of reach.
So, he returned to the cockpit.
His search for direction took him from the skies over Iran with a Dutch flying company, to water bombing fires in the Sierra Nevada, and then west again to Indonesia, where he flew helicopters on Java and Irian Jaya. Along the way, he found other Vietnam veterans who were also trying to make sense of what they had survived, and what they had lost.
Reflective, honest, and deeply personal, Vietnam and the Long Road Home is the story of a Chinook pilot's war, but even more, it is the story of the long aftermath: the search for belonging, stability, and a way home after Vietnam.
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