Only The Light Moves: Flying Covert Reconnaissance Missions in the Vietnam War

A young pilot’s covert Vietnam flights illuminate war’s cost, devotion, and fragile humanity.

Only the Light Moves tells the story of a twenty-four-year-old US Army pilot who volunteered to fly covert S.O.G., or Studies and Observations Group, reconnaissance missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a region that came to represent not only the United States’ war with Vietnam, but also the “secret war” with Laos and Cambodia.

But this is not simply a war story; it is a love story about flying. Capt...