What do you think?
Rate this book
A Rock in the Clouds: A Life Revisited
"On 4 October 1966, a C7-A Caribou airplane flying through blinding cloud cover crashed into Hon Cong Mountain near the base camp of the 1st Air Cavalry Division at An Khe. There were thirty-one people aboard the aircraft, an air crew of four along with twenty-seven passengers. Thirteen people died in the crash. I was one of the survivors."
Joe Tedeschi lives his experience with you in A Rock in the Clouds. Taking you through the life events that led to that fateful day, he describes the horror of the crash and relates the aftermath of recovering from his injuries and continuing his life as a career Army officer. As his journey reveals his faith-based purpose and destiny, he hopes to bring hope and inspiration to other Vietnam-era veterans, their families, and people of faith.
rockintheclouds.com
Joe Tedeschi lives his experience with you in A Rock in the Clouds. Taking you through the life events that led to that fateful day, he describes the horror of the crash and relates the aftermath of recovering from his injuries and continuing his life as a career Army officer. As his journey reveals his faith-based purpose and destiny, he hopes to bring hope and inspiration to other Vietnam-era veterans, their families, and people of faith.
rockintheclouds.com
287 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 9, 2021
1 person is currently reading
4 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Read
May 28, 2022MWSA Review
Wars may last for years—or even decades—but they often end in an instant for the individual soldiers who fight them. A Rock in the Clouds tells the story of one such instant, a plane crash in Vietnam that ended the author’s deployment a mere three weeks after it began. It also ended the lives of thirteen fellow service members, and the author never takes his survival for granted as he revisits the entirety of his life before, during, and after that near-death experience.
Any account of a plane crash would be harrowing, but this book’s finest feature is that the author goes beyond a first-person account and provides a painstakingly compiled record that sheds light in a way no single person could. The research also includes interesting nuggets about medical personnel he met during his recovery and, most strikingly, a picture of the airplane’s pilot with three of the sons he left behind after perishing in the crash.
The accident and its aftermath comprise the middle third of the book, with the first portion listing biographical details and the final third largely reprinting correspondence that happened during the book’s creation. Yet the central third reflects an interesting balance of personal narrative and research, with moments that provide welcome texture, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Perhaps the most resonant aspect of A Rock in the Clouds isn’t a particular section but that the book exists at all—that even a survivor whose injuries largely healed, whose military career continued successfully, and whose subsequent life has been nurtured by family, faith, and community still thinks back to a foggy Vietnam hillside in 1966, peering out of a broken fuselage, wondering what had just happened and why his right leg was stubbornly refusing to move.
Review by John McGlothlin (May 2022)
Wars may last for years—or even decades—but they often end in an instant for the individual soldiers who fight them. A Rock in the Clouds tells the story of one such instant, a plane crash in Vietnam that ended the author’s deployment a mere three weeks after it began. It also ended the lives of thirteen fellow service members, and the author never takes his survival for granted as he revisits the entirety of his life before, during, and after that near-death experience.
Any account of a plane crash would be harrowing, but this book’s finest feature is that the author goes beyond a first-person account and provides a painstakingly compiled record that sheds light in a way no single person could. The research also includes interesting nuggets about medical personnel he met during his recovery and, most strikingly, a picture of the airplane’s pilot with three of the sons he left behind after perishing in the crash.
The accident and its aftermath comprise the middle third of the book, with the first portion listing biographical details and the final third largely reprinting correspondence that happened during the book’s creation. Yet the central third reflects an interesting balance of personal narrative and research, with moments that provide welcome texture, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Perhaps the most resonant aspect of A Rock in the Clouds isn’t a particular section but that the book exists at all—that even a survivor whose injuries largely healed, whose military career continued successfully, and whose subsequent life has been nurtured by family, faith, and community still thinks back to a foggy Vietnam hillside in 1966, peering out of a broken fuselage, wondering what had just happened and why his right leg was stubbornly refusing to move.
Review by John McGlothlin (May 2022)
August 16, 2022
An alternate title to Tedeschi's book could be, "How I Found Peace after Coming Face to Face with Death".
The author returned from the Vietnam War with the same question all Vets ask, "Why him and not me"? Tedeschi does not believe in luck, his survival was due to Jesus being in the rear of the plane with him that day. The reader questions why Jesus wasn't with the 13 soldiers in the front of the plane that died.
Tedeschi, a chemical officer in charge of Agent Orange, finds peace in knowing his life was guided by Jesus. A beautiful life lead without introspection.
The author returned from the Vietnam War with the same question all Vets ask, "Why him and not me"? Tedeschi does not believe in luck, his survival was due to Jesus being in the rear of the plane with him that day. The reader questions why Jesus wasn't with the 13 soldiers in the front of the plane that died.
Tedeschi, a chemical officer in charge of Agent Orange, finds peace in knowing his life was guided by Jesus. A beautiful life lead without introspection.
December 17, 2022
In a Rock in the Clouds, Col. Tedeschi give us a dramatic example of the resilience of the human body and spirit. Not only his own, but also that of the other survivors of the C-7A Caribou that ran into a rock in the clouds encasing Hon Cong Mountain in Vietnam, as well as the heroic soldiers that administered medical care and carried the injured to the top of the steep mountain.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews