Permission to Kill!

Book review by PHILIP CASS

BRIAN WIZARD'S Permission to Kill! is astonishing, disturbing, exhilarating and one of the best books to come out of North Queensland in recent years.

Written by a former American helicopter gunner it is in essence a thinly disguised autobiography about the author's experiences in Vietnam in 1968-69.

It is astonishing because it exists at all, disturbing because the scars of Vietnam are still very present in our society and exhilarating because it is so well written.

The book is presented in the first person present, a deliberate choice by Wizard who wanted the reader to identify as closely as possible with the narrator.

"I didn't want to make any judgments about what went on," he said.

"I wanted the reader to feel that he or she was the central character and that the events in the book were happening to them.

"That way they are in a much better position to make judgments about the morality of the events. Readers should be warned, however, that it is not Apocalypse Now.

"That wasn't what it was like," Wizard said.

"The film was a nice mission impossible story but it was not very accurate.

"Except for the part when they shot up the sampan - that was pretty close.

"You learned to shoot when civilians started running because it meant they were going for their guns."

Wizard spent his entire tour of duty flying as a gunner with an all-volunteer crew.

After the war he found himself back in the United States where he was not even legally allowed to buy beer.

"It was crazy," Wizard said.

"I was allowed to shoot people but I couldn't buy a beer."

The Army eventually shipped him off to West Germany where he was a border guard.

If Vietnam had been strange, border duty in West Germany was even stranger.

"The troops figured it would take the Russians 12 minutes to break through our lines if they were serious," he said.

"That was just enough time to light a bowl of hash."

After he left the Army Wizard, like so many in the early 70's went off to find himself.

A decade later he found himself in North Queensland.

He wrote, produced, printed and paid for Permission to Kill! and is now writing its sequel.

The book serves to lay some myths to rest and, perhaps, to expiate some of Wizard's feelings about the war.

It is well worth reading.

Brian Wizard will be at the Left Bank bookshop in Flinders Mall today and for late night shopping, tomorrow and on Saturday morning to sign copies of his book.

He will screen video copies of film he shot during the war.