Stingers

Vietnam War - Helicopter Gunships

By: Fred Allen

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

STINGERS
One Tour. 362 Days. A Thousand Lifetimes.

Stingers is the brutally honest, firsthand account of an 18-year-old crew chief and door gunner thrust into the blood-soaked heart of the Vietnam War. From the cramped, bullet-riddled cabins of UH-1C Huey gunships to nighttime rocket attacks that shattered any illusion of safety, Fred Allen tells it exactly like it was—with no filter and no apologies.

Flying with the elite “Stingers” of the 116th Assault Helicopter Company, Allen survived rocket barrages, crash landings, and relentless firefights over hostile terrain. But survival came at a cost. As killing became routine, morality blurred. And with each mission, his grip on humanity slipped further away.

This isn’t a glorified war story. It’s a raw, relentless plunge into the daily reality of a soldier whose job was to deliver death—while enemy rounds exploded through the deck inches from his seat. Standing exposed on rocket pods, returning fire, scrambling for cover—this was war, up close and unforgiving.

Layered with real-time headlines, chaotic missions, and soul-deep reflections, Stingers lays bare the physical and emotional toll of a war America tried to forget—but its soldiers never could.

If you want to know what it truly meant to serve in Vietnam—not from a safe distance, but from the open door of a Huey under fire—Stingers is not just a memoir. It’s a witness. It’s a reckoning.

Honest book

Good book -worth listening to or reading it - it's very candid & revealing prospective on the war. Welcome Home Specialist Allen!

overall good listen and an interesting view of Vietnam

The automated neration doesn't always get the words right but overall good book and easy to figure out what was meant

I would perfer a real person reading.

It was of the most real stories that I have listened to about the Vietnam experience.

The truth about Viet Nam

It took to long for the true story about the men and women in Vietnam and what they had to endure

Pretty standard ‘Nam memoir fare

Author and content: The book was decent enough. As far as style, content, etc. it’s more or less your average soldier in Vietnam type of stuff with various interesting vignettes. Fairly early on you realize the authors tour of duty affected him deeply and as the chapters go on that comes more and more to the forefront. I don’t know that I would go through the book a second time, but I don’t regret reading it the first time. It’s worth a listen/read if you’ve got some free time, especially if you got it on sale like I did.

Narration: Appropriate for the subject matter. Narrators voice kind of complimented the material. As with most audibles, this book was better listened to at ~2x speed because of how slow the regular narration is. Narrator talking speed is my only major complaint and that’s a consistent grievance of mine across just about every book on here that I’ve listened to. I really wish publishers would quit padding out the listening time and just have narrators talk at a normal pace.