Author, Vietnam veteran reflects on time as helicopter pilot in war |
Posted: January 27, 2021 |
Freeland’s novel, “Chariots in the Sky,” focuses on main character Captain Taylor St. James and his journey as a helicopter pilot flying in combat missions in the Vietnam War. Freeland said he pulled from personal experiences or things he heard during his time in Vietnam, though he used the occasional embellishment to keep readers engaged. “The characters are all fictional, but with one or two minor exceptions in the book, all the stuff – and there’s a lot in there – it actually happened to someone during the course of my time [in Vietnam],” Freeland said. “I got shot at, got hit a lot of times, went down more than once, so I speak from personal experience.” Freeland took a historical fiction approach to his novel because he said he wanted readers to have the experiences without actually being in Vietnam. Freeland also explained that in his opinion having fictional character made it easier for readers to identify themselves with their experiences and behavior. “This [historical fiction] approach … I can’t say there’s none out there like it, but there’s very few, and almost all the books written helicopter pilots and crews during [the Vietnam War] … they’re autobiographies or biographies or a compilation of certain stories of members who flew,” Freeland said. “And that’s all good – that’s great – but … as a reader, not being there and not having that experience …, they really can’t identify with that.” Freeland also took inspiration from one of his childhood heroes, Audie Murphy, one of the most decorated American combat soldiers from World War II. After the war, Murphy wrote autobiographies and memoirs, and he made more than 40 feature films from 1948 to 1969. Freeland detailed an unforgettable experience he had meeting Audie Murphy when he was in the fourth grade. Murphy had visited the military base that Freeland was living on, working on his memoir and film “To Hell and Back.” “[Murphy] was coming our way and … I’m just a little boy in the fourth grade, so I come to attention and give him a hand salute as best a little boy can do, thinking this is one of my heroes,” Freeland said. “So then [Murphy] is walking and he sees me. He stops, and he walks over, and he kneels down, and he talks to me … I have no idea what he said, I just remember the moment.” Freeland said that he could remember feeling small standing next to Murphy. The experience that he had that day inspired some of his writing today and of course, fueled his passion for military history and passions that were more creative including writing and film. “If anybody has read ‘We Were Soldiers Once,’ or ‘Band of Brothers,’ or ‘To Hell and Back,’ I think they would really like this book because it’s done really similar to those three,” Freeland said. Freeland took five or six months to write his first manuscript in 2020, sending it to publishing companies in the area. Publish Authority, a group located in Roswell, Atlanta and Newport Beach, California, reached out to him after reading his novel, and in August of 2020, Freeland signed a contract with Publish Authority. The post Author, Vietnam veteran reflects on time as helicopter pilot in war appeared first on iMovies.ph. https://imovies.ph/author-vietnam-veteran-reflects-on-time-as-helicopter-pilot-in-war/
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