Bonnie-Sue: Library Edition [Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Marion F. Sturkey (Author), Dennis McKee (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2000

U.S. Marine Corps helicopter crews found little glory waiting for them in faraway Vietnam. Instead they became locked in a savage struggle with tenacious Sino-Soviet pawns. The author, a former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, combines fascinating detail with grim realism. He uses After-Action-Reports, Unit Diaries, and hundreds of records from Marine Corps archives to build the outline for this riveting chronology. Onto this framework the author weaves personal accounts from the helicopter crews. Day by day he breathes life into this eloquent saga of Marines at war. Step through this unique looking-glass into the volitile crucible of combat in Vietnam. Taste the danger and fear, the madness and passion. Experience the love and brotherhood shared by aircrewmen and infantrymen. Their survival became their victory.

--This text refers to the Perfect Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

BONNIE-SUE is one of the most compelling books about commitment and sacrifice by Marines for their fellow Marines during the mid-1960s. Every chapter contains poignant accounts of the courage, compassion, drama, humor, success, and tragedy associated with close combat. Written by Marine helicoper pilot Marion F. Sturkey, this story brings the term air-ground-team into its proper perspective. This is a book about commitment. It should be read by all Marines. --Marine Corps Gazette

There is no better book about the Marine helicopter war in Vietnam. One does not yawn while reading this book. It is a compelling and vivid picture of what it was like to be a pilot or combat aircrewman in Southeast Asia. Accurate and factual, Sturkey captures the times: the turbulent 1960s, the moods, fears, and humor of young Marines who derseved better than what their leaders in Washington sent them into. BONNIE-SUE is a classic tale of the Marines and their particular brand of flying. It rises above the mud of war and takes the reader on an inspiring mission with professional and courageous men. --Leatherneck Magazine

This is our story, told some twenty to thirty years later but as chilling and touching to us who were there as if it took place yesterday. The author sets the stage culturally and historically with a prologue that begins during the first millennium B.C. and marches the reader smartly through the Chinese, Japanese, and French occupations of Vietnam. Then begins the heart of the book - what it was like to fly the workhorse helicopters. Sturkey serves up a compelling mixture of anecdotes, facts, criticism, conjecture, philosophy, terror, and survival that takes the reader along both in the cockpit and on the ground with the Infantry. He ends with a personal retrospective -- what did it all mean. --Marine Corps Aviation Association --This text refers to the Perfect Paperback edition.

About the Author

Marion Sturkey served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. Thereafter he worked in civil aviation, corporate security, and law enforcement for 29 years. After retirement from the corporate world he began researching and writing articles and books about military and aviation concerns. BONNIE-SUE was the first of his ten books. --This text refers to the Perfect Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks; Unabridged edition (January 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786116951
• ISBN-13: 978-0786116959
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,124,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!, September 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: BONNIE-SUE: A Marine Corps Helicopter Squadron in Vietnam (Perfect Paperback)

As an H-46 pilot in HMM 262, call sign "Chatter Box" in 1969 and '70 I found the book truly amazing. Sturky explains in detail stories I had only heard about. The vivid descriptions brought back forgotten memories of night medivacs, and emergency recon extracts and of the hours of boredom and moments of stark terror experienced by every combat pilot since aviation was born. He tells the true story of the Marine helo drivers, aircrews and grunts in Vietnam . A story that has been too often ignored.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in that period of Marine Corps history.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An accurate account of what REALLY happened!, March 24, 2001

By 

Randall S Drisgula (Ringwood, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: BONNIE-SUE: A Marine Corps Helicopter Squadron in Vietnam (Perfect Paperback)

I bought this book for my Father, mainly a H-34 pilot while in Vietnam. He immediately started leafing through it and recognized a number of old and still current friends. While reading it he was impressed by how accurately Sturkey described missions that my Father was also a part of. He said that if I wanted to have any understanding of what Vietnam for him was like, that I should read it as well.

The first thing that struck me, and continued to strike me, was the casualness of how missions and battles were described. Marion describes a squadron mate's H-46 colliding with a grounded Huey in the same way that I would explain a Computer crashing while at work. It's all part of the job, and getting distracted from the task at hand could spell disaster for both the pilots and their crew. As I neared the end of the book, I noticed that even I was starting to view hot LZ's, steady ground fire, and rear wheel only landings as normal occurrences to be dealt with every day, by every pilot.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to have a glimpse at what it would be like to put your life on the line for your country, and your friends. I look at my Father, and all Veterans, in a whole new light.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sturkey deserves a PhD(Plenty of Heroic Detail) for Book!, April 23, 1998

By 

"bandit32" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bonnie-Sue: A Marine Corps Helicopter Squadron in Vietnam (Hardcover)

The detailed history of the Marine helicopter pilot has never been written in such a hard , cold -steel factual way as this great book reveals. The author, Marion Sturkey, has produced a very exciting chronological documentary using no pseudonyms, only the true names, of pilots and aircrewmen who flew and died in I Corps. His Dedication page, to 28 Marines from HMM-265 who " made the Supreme Sacrifice in the noble cause of freedon during the course of the Vietnam War", punctuates the fact that real people fight wars, not statistics.

The Prologue very squarely sets thestage for the book by looking at a small part of the history of Vietnam which is germane to understanding a small bit of the Oriental mind as it pertains to "the war" and the "coming of the United States, as leader of the free world." The U.S. Marines arrived in 1962 to help the South Vietnamese, a country already used to warfare for at least 2000 years. How bizarre to begin the whole affair on Palm Sunday, 1962. Beginning with the very early troop deployment , Code named Operation Shu-Fly, the Marines actually started in the Mekong region with H-34,s before landing in mass at Danang on March 8, 1965. Funny how PBS documentaries seem to leave this fact out.

Following the Prologue, Marion Sturkey doesa masterful job through some 10 chapters telling the actual story of Marine Aviation starting from Marble Mountain, July 14, 1966 through The Seige at Khe Sanh. Day by day , hour by hour, you will be stunned by the details contained in Chapters titled: Mutter Ridge, The New Year, The Longest Night, The Hill Fights and They Bought the Farm. You will be held captured by stirring detail, taken from hundreds of abstracts from After-action-Reports, Aircraft Accident Reports, squadron Unit Diaries and Flight Schedules, Casualty Cards, and Command Chronologies. Bonnie-Sue.... is no "from memory" biography.

Closing out the book , the author submits a Requiem: (Webster-- A Mass for the repose of a departed soul or souls....in honor of the dead!) Punctuating the details of the pull-out, overthrow and die-down of the War ,Marion Sturkey quotes many prophetic words by people known and unknown to show just how "history" will remember the whole affair. There is no crying or remorse, only a factual hard hitting and truthful approach to reality. To quote the author, " Surviving Marine Corps helicopter pilots and aircrewmen remember the horror and hardships, the fear and fatique, the stench and carnage. Yet, they also recall the camaraderie, the love and brotherhood, the passion, the incommunicable experience of Marines at war. THEY FOUGHT AND FLEW HAND-IN-HAND WITH DEATH, BUT THEY WERE NEVER MORE ALIVE. THEIR SURVIVAL BECAME THEIR VICTORY!"

Any helicopter pilot who is serious about knowing exactly what happened will want to have and read this book. If you rely on accounts, such as the many PBS mini-series, solely for your facts, you have not heard the real truth. To help quickly find facts and names, "Bonnie Sue.." contains a complete Master Index with 419 names(real people) and a Bibliography of 169 listings. If the author Marion F. Sturkey didn't apply for and receive a PhD for his fine research and writing, he should have. As far as receiving one from the School of Hard Knocks, I would give him a PhD, for sure. Read it and you will no doubt agree. And, in this case, PhD actually stands for "Plenty of Heroic Detail"!

Tom Payne
Bandit32
118th AHC
66-67 END