A brief and by-the-numbers account of the author's time flying F-105s in Vietnam, Basel's Pak Six will offer little to those beyond the most die hard of aviation memoir aficionados. For readers familiar with the topic, the book will feel needless and frustratingly light. Basel's prose is generally not descriptive and offers little in the way of contemplative reflection or analytical heft. Most passages consist of 1-1.5 page 'vignettes' of a mission or its planning or the officers club or the author's R&R trips off base. Even the mass-market paperback copy stretches only 160 pages of liberally-spaced formatting with hand-drawn maps and flightsuit patches. The memoir provides little more than a glancing, surface view of the author's experience or the larger nature of the particular segment of the air war in which he was involved. Which isn't to imply that one should expect every combat memoir to address the larger subjects of morality or mortality or the existential psychodrama of being in combat. Indeed, for the reader, a memoir of excessive soul-searching can feel indulgent and navel gazing; tactical complaints can become histrionic and begrudging; excessive detail can feel suffocating and unfocused. So Pak Six disappoints not in failing to touch upon those subjects, but in its lack of depth of detail, context, or individuality. While combat memoirs almost always touch upon the differences between combat as experienced and combat as presented in pop culture, Basel has an annoying tendency to frequently comment upon the "just realized" fraudulence of Hollywood's representation of valor, service, or war. Gee, really? Repeated comments like these only serve to underscore the unoriginality of his description.

If there is any redeeming aspect of this memoir, it is the fact that Basel's simple, quick, declarative prose style can occasionally achieve a jarring, pulpy edginess, especially in the few scenes where missions are particularly 'hairy.' In these instances, the lingo-heavy patter, the short sentences, and the lack of depth can give the book a sharp power and immediacy that ably evokes the speed and disorientation of aerial combat. A number of the missions, from the confusion of the bombing runs on heavily-defended points in North Vietnam (the route 'package' of the title) to the almost accidental felicity of the author's "MIG kill," do give the reader a good sense of author's experience. And, on occasion, his peculiar melange of scattershot scenes, jargon mash-up, random passages of italicized inner monologue, and heavy use of cliched metaphor and simile can blur into a sort of narrative haze that is punctured by the quick adrenaline jolt of the missions -- no doubt a similar feeling to those experienced by the pilots. But far too often, the brevity and laconic triteness make the book feel distant, rote, and inconsequential

In the end, Pak Six is burdened by the availability of so many better memoirs (books like Thud Ridge or When Thunder Rolled or 100 Missions North, which cover the same experiences of F-105 pilots so much more poetically and movingly), that it disappoints by what it isn't. The standards of the genre, given other offerings, are just too high to pull Pak Six out of the category of better-than-average mass-market paperback. It is simply too anecdotal and picayune to recommend to anyone other than the completist. ( )