Herr - Dispatches

Michael Herrs
Dispatches

The best book to have been written about the Vietnam War.

The New York Times Book Review

Having read Dispatches, it is difficult to convey the impact of total experience as all the facades of patriotism, heroism and the whole colossal fraud of American intervention fall away to the bare bones of fear, war and death.

William S. Burroughs

Tough, profane, relentless elegant.

Newsweek

A classic!

David Halberstam

Herr hurls one into his experience, insists an uninitiated reader be comforted with no politics, no certain morality, no clear outline of history.

The New York Review of Books

Stunning.

The New York Times

Some stories must be toldnot because they will delight and instruct but because they happened.

Time

Splendid He brings alive the terror of combat in a way that rivals All Quiet on the Western Front.

Tom Wolfe

Michael Herrs
Dispatches

Michael Herr is the author of Dispatches, The Big Room, and Walter Winchell, and coauthor of the screenplays for Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.

Also by Michael Herr

The Big Room

(with Guy Peellaert)

Walter Winchell

First Vintage International Edition, August 1991

Copyright 1968, 1969, 1970, 1977 by Michael Herr

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1977.

Portions of this book were originally published in New American Review #7, Esquire and Rolling Stone.

constitute an extension of the copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Herr, Michael.
Dispatches / Michael Herr.
p. cm.
Reprint. Originally published: New York : Knopf, 1977.
eISBN: 978-0-307-81416-6
1. Vietnamese Conflict, 19611975Personal narratives, American.
2. Herr, Michael. I. Title.
[DS559.5.H47 1991]
959.70438dc20 90-50771

Author photograph Don McCullin

v3.1_r2

For my mother and father

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published song lyrics:

ABKCO Music, Inc.: Specified eleven words from the song 2000 Light Years From Home by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard (). Copyright 1967 by ABKCO Music, Inc. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by permission.

Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.: Specified twenty words from the song Lil Red Riding Hood by Ronald Blackwell (). Copyright 1966 by Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 65 Music Square West, Nashville, Tennessee 37013. All Rights Reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission of the publisher.

American Broadcasting Music, Inc.: Specified two lines of lyrics from the song San Francisco (Be Sure And Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair) by John Phillips (). Copyright 1967 by American Broadcasting Music, Inc., and Honest John Music. Used by permission only. All Rights Reserved.

Arc Music Corp.: Specified ten words from the song Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl by Sonny Boy Williamson (). Copyright 1964 by Arc Music Corp. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

Cotillion Music, Inc.: Specified seven words from the song The Tighten Up by Archie Bell & The Drells (). Copyright 1966 by Cotillion Music, Inc., Springalo Toones and Ten-East Music. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

Don Williams Music Group: Specified line of lyrics from the song Foxy Lady by Jimi Hendrix (). Copyright 1967 by Bella Godiva Music, Worldwide Administration Don Williams Music Group. Used by permission.

). Copyright 1966 by Dwarf Music. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

EMI April Music, Inc.: Specified twenty words from the song Magical Mystery Tour by John Lennon and Raul McCartney (). Copyright 1967 by Northern Songs Limited. Rights for the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico, controlled by EMI April Music, Inc. under license from ATV Music (Comet). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Frank Zappa Music, Inc.: Specified six lines of lyrics from the song Trouble Comin Every Day by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (). Copyright 1965 by Frank Zappa Music, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

Jobete Music Co., Inc.: Specified eight words from the song Galveston by Jimmy Webb (). Copyright 1965 by Jobete Music Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

Painted Desert Music Corporation: Specified two lines of lyrics from the song Ring of Fire by June Carter and Merle Kilgore (). Copyright 1962, 1963 by Painted Desert Music Corporation. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

Robert Mellin Music Publishing Corp. : Specified eight words from the song Black Is Black by Los Bravos (). Copyright 1965 by Robert Mellin Music Publishing Corp.

Screen GemsEMI Music, Inc.: Specified fifteen words from the song We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, words and music by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (). Copyright 1966 by Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

There was a map of Vietnam on the wall of my apartment in Saigon and some nights, coming back late to the city, Id lie out on my bed and look at it, too tired to do anything more than just get my boots off. That map was a marvel, especially now that it wasnt real anymore. For one thing, it was very old. It had been left there years before by another tenant, probably a Frenchman, since the map had been made in Paris. The paper had buckled in its frame after years in the wet Saigon heat, laying a kind of veil over the countries it depicted. Vietnam was divided into its older territories of Tonkin, Annam and Cochin China, and to the west past Laos and Cambodge sat Siam, a kingdom. Thats old, Id tell visitors, thats a really old map.

If dead ground could come back and haunt you the way dead people do, theyd have been able to mark my map CURRENT and burn the ones theyd been using since 64, but count on it, nothing like that was going to happen. It was late 67 now, even the most detailed maps didnt reveal much anymore; reading them was like trying to read the faces of the Vietnamese, and that was like trying to read the wind. We knew that the uses of most information were flexible, different pieces of ground told different stories to different people. We also knew that for years now there had been no country here but the war.

The Mission was always telling us about VC units being engaged and wiped out and then reappearing a month later in full strength, there was nothing very spooky about that, but when we went up against his terrain we usually took it definitively, and even if we didnt keep it you could always see that wed at least been there. At the end of my first week in-country I met an information officer in the headquarters of the 25th Division at Cu Chi who showed me on his map and then from his chopper what theyd done to the Ho Bo Woods, the vanished Ho Bo Woods, taken off by giant Rome plows and chemicals and long, slow fire, wasting hundreds of acres of cultivated plantation and wild forest alike, denying the enemy valuable resources and cover.