Racing Back to Vietnam

About Racing Back to Vietnam

2018 GOLD MEDAL WINNER (MILITARY WRITERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA)

This award-winning Vietnam War memoir from an Air Force flight surgeon is “a superb, first-hand account of combat flying” (Dan Hampton, New York Times–bestselling author of Viper Pilot)

In 1971, United States Air Force flight surgeon John Pendergrass spent much of his time in the backseat of an F-4 Phantom, racing across the skies of Vietnam.  

Forty-five years later, he boards an altogether different type of aircraft and heads back to Vietnam for an altogether different kind of race—an IRONMAN® triathlon.
 
A veteran of IRONMAN triathlons on six continents, Racing Back to Vietnam follows John’s year in combat and his return to Vietnam, revisiting a country that, for him, is bound up in history, memory and emotion. A memoir of war as seen from the skies and a reflection on life’s high adventure, John tries to reconcile the Vietnam he saw from the backseat of a fighter jet with today’s modern Vietnam.
 
Thought-provoking, heartfelt and gripping, Racing Back to Vietnam is one man’s trip back through time on a journey of rediscovery.