‘I want to be buried on top of Connor’s Hill, the mountain at the head of the Tambo Valley in East Gippsland.’ These were the words that came into Barry Heard’s mind as he faced death in the jungle in Vietnam in August 1967, an episode recounted in his first memoir, Well Done, Those Men (2005). Later in that book, Heard recalled another near-death experience, when his mind turned again to Connor’s Hill: ‘I was in a warm, soft place that was bright, peaceful and beautiful, like the top of Connor’s Hill. It was where I wanted to be.’

In Heard’s second book, The View from Connor’s Hill, we hear all about the idyllic place that his soul returns to in moments of extreme stress. This sunny anecdotal memoir is a prequel to Heard’s darker memoir Well Done, Those Men, which has become a widely read and loved work about the experience of a Vietnam Veteran, detailing not only the training and the combat, but also the years of post-traumatic stress disorder that Heard suffered before reaching a turning point and starting to write.