One of the Few
A True Account of Courage and Stepping into the Fight
One of the Few is a reflective and revealing pilot’s memoir about combat missions during the Vietnam War.
Fighter pilot Robert Graham’s military memoir One of the Few recounts his service in Vietnam.
After enlisting when he was eighteen years old, Graham flew more than five hundred combat missions in Vietnam. It was dangerous work; around 20 percent of his fellow pilots died in combat. He served four combat tours in total, seeing the war graduate from its early days of guerrilla warfare to jungle warfare. Graham earned the Silver Star, commanded a tactical fighter squadron, and rose to the rank of colonel before retiring from military service.
This sweeping account of the Vietnam War is filtered through Graham’s particular lens; he was there between 1961 and 1974. The book gathers his “cockpit stories” from the time, covering risky missions with aplomb. Commenting on broad aspects of the war, like the use of white phosphorous, the book moves between everyday memories, as of scheduling, and big-picture ruminations, as with those on the nature of warfare and what events led to the Vietnam War in particular, with clarity. There are accounts of air strikes, missiles, and cluster bombings, all shared in charged language. Digressions and romantic flourishes also arise: In recreating Graham’s initial impression of Saigon, the book references Casablanca and its French colonial and European influences. Still, the book makes good use of granular details and vivifies its action scenes well, resulting in broad appeal.
There’s an edifying element to the book too: Military tactics, techniques, procedures, and rationale are covered in straightforward, thorough terms, as are the reasons why Graham’s select group of elite fighter pilots were sent into the field. Military reasoning is also included, with the book noting that a fighter pilot’s best defense at night is to operate without lights, staying in constant radio contact with their fellow soldiers, among other insights. More humanizing is the lighthearted language that’s used in recalling encounters with bushmaster snakes and monkeys during a jungle survival training trip in Central America, where piranhas “eat everything, like cows and stuff,” or to describing elephant grass as “a weed-looking kind of thing” and noting that some days “you really earn that dollar and a half” of combat pay.
A sweeping memoir, One of the Few chronicles a soldier’s service and sacrifices during air combat in the Vietnam War.
Reviewed by
Joseph S. Pete
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
