Interview: Jim Hooper, Author of A Hundred Feet Over Hell

Jim Hooper in Yemen two years ago

Today, I am thrilled to welcome Jim Hooper to Diary of an Eccentric.  Jim is the author of A Hundred Feet Over Hell, which made my “Best of 2010” list.  A Hundred Feet Over Hell is about the Catkillers who flew over the Demilitarized Zone during the Vietnam War.  Jim’s brother, Bill, was a Catkiller, and Jim enabled him and his friends to describe their missions and experiences in their own words.  Here’s an excerpt from my review:

Going back and forth between the pilots and some of the soldiers on the ground, several particularly intense scenes involve a handful of troops hunkered down, unable to move, and under intense fire from the Viet Cong.  Various circumstances — being shot at, the weather, the time of day — made the Catkillers’ job difficult, but despite the pressure and with the help of the men in their backseats, they saved many lives.  Hooper puts you right in the plane, and my heart pounding, I rushed through the pages to see how the missions turned out.  I don’t know how these young men — many barely out of high school — could deal with such pressure day in and day out, but they did their jobs well and with heart.

Please give a warm welcome to Jim Hooper.

What prompted you to write about the Catkillers?

My kid brother’s return from Vietnam had been etched permanently into my mind long before I thought of the book. I was a few months out of the army, having served in Germany, when we received a letter from his commanding officer, expressing regret for Bill’s wound and praising him to the sky. What? Because Bill had ticked the ‘NO’ box after the question “Do you want your family notified if you are wounded?” there had been no official telegram from the Department of the Army. As you can imagine, my mother almost collapsed, then got on the phone to our congressman, who quickly discovered Bill had just arrived at the hospital at Ft Gordon, GA. Three weeks later, he was given a few days’ leave. He and I sat at the kitchen table until dawn, sipping injudiciously from a bottle of JD Black, Bill talking almost non-stop as I listened open-mouthed. The stories he told me that night and over the next days never left me.

Years later, as a freelance war correspondent and photo-journalist, I had seen combat, learned the meaning of fear under fire, and, though both were designer wounds compared with what my brother had suffered, had received my own red badges of courage. And I’d written my first book about it all. With a few hundred flying hours as a private pilot, I decided I was finally qualified to apply all that to recording what Bill had lived through, as a tribute to my best and most trusted friend. Little did I imagine it would turn into a 16-year project.

How did you get in touch with them?  Were they interested in talking about their experiences, or did you encounter some resistance?  My experience with Vietnam veterans has been that they don’t like to open up about their time in combat.

Tracking down those Bill had flown with was a story in itself, especially since I live in England. He had long since lost touch with them, but the names remained fresh. The internet was very new, and I started with the White Pages. The first name I tried was Charles Finch, and dozens of bemused Charles Finches picked up their telephones to listen to my reason for calling; none was the man I was searching for. By good fortune, one of Catkillers had been given the unusual name “Sargent” at birth. There couldn’t be too many Sargent Means, I reasoned, and sure enough, I found myself talking with one of the men I’d heard so much about. Still in the army, he was very wary about a cold-caller claiming to be the brother (and a journalist to boot!) of a Vietnam comrade. I gave him Bill’s number in Florida, and as soon as my bona fides were established the Catkiller network opened. Even then, getting their recollections was a struggle. Fortunately, Doc Clement, one of those straight-out-of-central-casting characters, was incredibly enthusiastic about the project. He led the charge, pestering the Catkillers unmercifully with prods and prompts to send me material. It still took years to gather enough stories, edit and work them into chronological order, before I had a viable manuscript. The next struggle was finding a publisher, which was accomplished when I eventually went to agent Bill Corsa of Specialty Book Marketing.

Are you still in touch with the Catkillers? Have you received comments from those who read the book?

Fifteen years of emailing back and forth with the Catkillers saw some become close friends; as a result, we regularly bring each other up to date by email or Skype. The praise from all those who feature in A Hundred Feet Over Hell – as well as many who served before and after the period covered in the book – has been overwhelming and not a little humbling. I was honoured last year by being invited as guest speaker at their reunion, where I had the opportunity to meet most of them face-to-face for the first time. It was a deeply satisfying experience. One of the unintended consequences of the book has been over a dozen reconnections amongst Catkillers who had completely lost touch with their wartime comrades, as well as US Army and Marine Corps observers who rode in their back seats.

What do you want readers — especially those like me, without a background in military terminology, etc. — to take from the book?

For too long the Vietnam War was a highly contentious period of American history. Many of those sent to fight were branded as war criminals on their return. My brother, still recovering from a serious wound, was called a “hired killer” and spat on soon after going back to college. It was not an all-volunteer army as we have today; the vast majority were drafted and sent to Southeast Asia: the alternative was jail or fleeing to Canada. Lumping them into the same category as Lt William Calley, responsible for the infamous My Lai Massacre, was not just desperately unfair but morally wrong. So I guess the message for those with no military background is that the Catkillers were bright, funny and honorable men – boy-next-door types – who risked their lives to support other young Americans, who, like themselves, served there by government fiat. To a lesser extent, I wanted to explain the job the Catkillers were given. This was more difficult, particularly in the use of terminology. I suspected the largest percentage of readers would come to the book because of their own military experiences; thus I was loathe to translate everything in ‘civilianese,’ something that annoys veterans considerably. In the end, I leaned more toward the jargon, but tried to explain in subsequent paragraphs what it all meant without insulting either side’s intelligence. (One of the biggest mistakes authors make is underestimating their audience.) Getting the right balance was difficult, and perhaps I wasn’t as successful as I might have been. Another goal was to avoid the angst so often used to stitch together war memoirs. It’s an approach that panders to those who believe war is an atavistic and dehumanizing phenomenon; and it plays well to certain publishers. Unfortunately, war is part of man’s – as opposed to woman’s – DNA, and no part of that particular genetic sequence will ever be bred out of us. To those who don’t believe it, have a look at DVD covers. The huge percentage that show men (and occasionally women) brandishing guns tells you that if there was no market for war/police drama the big film studios wouldn’t invest millions in producing such films. Is war frightening? Immensely. Can it be life altering? Unquestionably. Dehumanizing? The fact that the Catkillers placed themselves in mortal danger on almost a daily basis to save lives suggests quite the opposite. And contrary to popular myth, they all came home and established successful careers; not a sociopath among them.

[Jim, you did an excellent job making the book understandable and accessible to the average reader without making it too simplistic.]

Jim Hooper in Africa 20 years ago

What has been the biggest adventure of your writing career?

Tough question. First, writing is an adventure all by itself. As I’m sure you know, it can be alternately intimidating and exhilarating. As far as physical adventure, it’s a toss up between the eight wars in African I covered and the war in Bosnia. In Africa, the distances – whether in the back of captured Soviet trucks or on foot through jungle and forest – were daunting and physically demanding. I also had to accept that a serious injury could very well have terminal consequences before the various rebel armies I accompanied could get me to modern medical care. By good fortune, the two times I was wounded was while embedded with South African forces in Namibia; in both instances I was on a helicopter in less than an hour and heading for a military hospital. Bosnia was a different situation entirely. I spent almost six months on my own, driving between the various front lines, being shot at by all three sides on occasion. The most terrifying experience was being captured by Arab Islamists near the central Bosnian town of Travnik; I was extremely lucky to survive. It was certainly the most dangerous place I’ve ever been. To put it in perspective, during the Vietnam War, sixty-three journalists were killed over twenty-two years; in the first three years of the Bosnian war, over seventy died.

[You certainly have had your share of adventures, and it sounds like you have many experiences about which to write.]

What projects are you working on now?

A novel nearing completion has been interrupted by three publishers wanting rights to my first book, which has been out of print since 1992. This has seen me dive into revising the original manuscript. Alongside that, I’ve pulled a couple of thousand slides and black and white negatives from files I haven’t looked at in almost two decades, the best of which may end up in a companion volume or two to complement the revised edition. And then there’s the relaxing and enjoyable time addressing your questions. Nice break, so thank you.

[Congratulations!  I wish you much success!]

What books (fiction and non-fiction) about the Vietnam War do you consider to be must-reads?

I must confess the only novel based on the Vietnam War I’ve read is The 13th Valley. I remember it as well-written but dark and angst-riven. Top of the non-fiction list has to be Dispatches by Michael Herr, who spent a year covering the conflict for Esquire magazine. As background to understanding what occurred prior to President Kennedy sending the first US troops to the country, Bernard Fall’s Street Without Joy is superb. Though poorly adapted to the big screen, We Were Soldiers Once…and Young ranks high as an account of what America’s young draftees lived through. Written by General Hal Moore, who as a lieutenant colonel was US commander at the Ia Drang battle, and correspondent Joe Galloway, who was also there, it is a singularly gripping memoir.

Thanks, Jim, for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer my questions. I look forward to reading more of your work in the future.

Disclosure: I am an IndieBound affiliate and an Amazon associate.

© 2011 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.