Permission to Kill — Book 1 of the Will He Make It Saga
Before there was a battle to come home, there was a battle to survive.
In 1968, young Willie Maykett arrives in Viet Nam and quickly discovers that life in an Army motor pool isn’t the experience he came looking for. Hungry for adventure and determined to become somebody, Willie trades the safety and routine of his mechanical assignment for the open door of a Huey helicopter and the dangerous life of a combat assault door gunner.
His first assignment takes him aboard Blue 10, a troop-carrying “slick” with the Thunderhawk Assault Helicopter Company. From the air, Willie is introduced to an entirely different world—landing zones, machine guns, troop insertions, incoming fire, and the strange exhilaration of flying into places where survival is never guaranteed.
Realizing that he is living the kind of experience books and movies are made from, Willie begins documenting it. He keeps a diary, takes photographs, and shoots hundreds of feet of Super 8mm film, preserving a firsthand record of a war being fought from the doors of Huey helicopters.
But even the life of a combat door gunner isn’t enough for Willie.
When wounded crewmembers leave openings aboard the legendary company smokeship Pollution IV, Willie gets the opportunity he has been looking for. Its mission is unlike that of the troop-carrying helicopters: Pollution IV flies into the danger first, laying thick smoke screens that conceal vulnerable helicopters and soldiers from enemy view as they enter and leave landing zones.
The assignment puts Willie and the crew at the leading edge of the action—flying low, taking fire, and confronting the enemy from a helicopter built to protect the rest of the flight. Eventually, Pollution IV gains another formidable weapon: “Big Bertha,” a door-mounted .50-caliber machine gun, adding extraordinary firepower to an already unconventional aircraft.
Permission to Kill is a fast-moving account of aerial combat, camaraderie, danger, adrenaline, and a young man’s transformation under the pressures of war. But beneath the action lies the beginning of a much larger story: what happens when a young civilian is trained to live and survive as a combat soldier—and what becomes of him when the shooting finally stops?
This is where the Will He Make It Saga begins.
For an additional look into Brian Wizard’s Viet Nam experience, readers can also explore his award-winning documentary, Brian Wizard’s Viet Nam: “Then, Again, and Beyond,” featuring actual combat footage preserved from his time in the war.
